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JVST TALKS

ON
COMMON THEMES

Class _3^^ailv2JX.
Book .Te a 7 c79

Ci)EffirGHT DEPOSm

AUTOGRAPH EDITION

LIMITED TO
ONE THOUSAND AND FIFTY COPIES

THIS IS NO.

JUST TALKS
ON COMMON THEMES

BY
ARTHUR G. STAPLES

LEWISTON JOURNAL PUBLISHING CO.

LEWISTON, MAINE

1919

Copyright

1919

A. G. Staples

MAY -5 1919

@CI.A52534S

PREFACE

This book is a selection from articles appearing
each day in the columns of the Lewiston Evening
Journal, a newspaper published in Lewiston-Auburn,
Maine. This accounts for the many local allusions and
Maine colloquialisms.

No apology is needed for the publication of this
book — or if such apology be required, it should not
come from the writer. One hundred readers (more or
less) contend for the distinction of being the first to
suggest that these familiar essays be put in a book.
Left later, to the discrimination of the same public, one
thousand readers professed by letter a desire to have
copies of this book when published. Whether they
will regret it, is a matter for the future to determine ;
but it leaves the publishers comfortable, since they
have no critics to appease and no large market to seek.

It will be seen that many of the sketches are auto-
biographical. Autobiography is always a matter of
taste. It is true that there is little of interest in com-
mon lives ; yet, there is value in the sum total of human
experience. For instance, a certain man who lived a
quiet life once wrote two books. One of them was to be
his monument ; in it he "solved" all the problems of life.
In the other book were told the simple annals of his
own life. The former book is forgotten — out of print ;
the latter is read by thousands, daily. The world may
thus find something of interest in any commonplace
life — especially if it be told with fidelity to truth. It
is the fond belief of the writer that if there is any
virtue in any portion of this book, it lies in the fact that
these sketches were written out of a feeling of
intimacy with his public, in a purely spontaneous
enjoyment of the themes, and in belief in their truth.

One word more, the material for many of these
sketches came from many sources, to all of which
thanks are due without further notice. It is hoped
that the book will do no harm and there is a faint hope
in the miraculous — that it may get a smile, or a tear or
a second thought in a busy world.

Arthur G. Staples.

Lewiston, Maine, May, 1919.

CONTENTS

Chapter Page

On "Let's Go Fishing" - 1

On "Being a Martial-Figger" 5

On "A Toast to the Flag" - 8

On "Make Your Wife a Partner" 9

On "The Butterplt and the Pig".— - 12

On "Dogs-in-General" 14

On "Sacrifice of the Rose" 16

On "Women's Back Hair" 19

On "The Shrines of Home"... -- 21

On "Maine and Midsummer" 23

On "Going to the Dentist" 26

On "Responsibility of a Perfect Baby" 28

On "The Going and the Coming" — 30

On "The Old Time District School" 32

On "The Northwest Wind" ..- 34

On "Thoughts on the Hen" 37

On "Furnaces" -... 39

On "Hats Here and There" 41

On "Playing the Game" 45

On "The Poet and the Apple Blossom" 46

On "Shadow and Substance" 48

On "Feather Beds, et cetera" 50

On "Sticking to the Job" 52

On "The Bath-Tub " 55

On "Clothes" 57

On "Hell" 59

On "Getting There by Persevering" 61

On "Making the Best op Things" 63

On "The Other Name for Success" 65

On "The Voice of the Frog".... 67

On "The Fair Average of Wickedness" 69

On "Why One Man Succeeded "....: 71

On "Believing" 73

On "It Costs But Two Cents" 75

On "A Night in the Open" 77

On "Tom and His Hatchet" 79

On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On
On

CONTENTS

"Trees and Forests" - 81

"The Golden Rule in Daily Life" 83

"The Quieter Roax>"..._ 85

"The Truth Without a Text" 87

"The Ladies" 91

"The Price op a Good Time" .— . 92

"The Wind and the Soul" 94

"The Appeal of Mystery" 97

"Them Pants" _ - 99

"Pitching Quate" 102

"The Clock of the Centuries" 104

"The Intolerable" 106

"Cultivate the Birds" 108

"You Never Can Tell Till You Try" 110

"That's the Boy of It" 113

"AUTOING WITH A ChEERFUL Man" 115

"Trundle Beds" -— 117

"Progress and Wonder" 120

"Fussing About the Weather" 122

"Being the Whole Thing" 124

"Beauty of the World" 127

" Pastures " 129

"Thinking Twice" 131

"The Wayside Lily" 134

"Table Manners" 136

"Fractions Here and There" .. 138

"KIeeping a Dog" 141

"Man's Neckties" 143

"Making an Impression" 145

"What This Day Really Means" .— . 148

"A Certain Form of Laziness" 151

"Sam as Chauffeur" 153

"Classifying Men"._ 155

"Living by Rivers" 157

"The First Skates" 159

On
On
On
On
On

On "The Scientific Use of Whiskers" 162

"The Light in the East" 164

"After Dinner Speakers" 167

"Walt Whitman and Some Others" 169

"The First Snow Storm" 172

"Make Your Life a Living Spring" 174

CONTENTS XI

On "Greetings to School Children"... 176

On "The Old-Time Boy-Shop" ... _ 179

On "Breaking of Drouths". 181

On "Owning Half a Horse" 183

On "Justice as a Solvent" , 186

On "A Story 'How Hosea Came' " 188

On "Preservation of the Home" 191

On "The Pine Tree" 193

On "Total Depravity of Inanimate Things" 196

On "The Half Hour Before You Sleep" 199

On "The Old Country Brass Band" 201

On "More on the Old Brass Band".... 204

On "When Belinda Speaks a Piece" 206

On "Germany's Reconstruction"... 209

On "Capping the Main Truck".... 211

On "Haunted Rooms ".... 214

On "Loving the Schoolmarm" 216

On "The Dog on the Bridge" 219

On "Woman" _ 221

On "Giving Advice, Gratis" 224

On "Old Pictures in the Junk Shop"..... 227

On "The Woods of God" 229

On "Maine in Autumn" 232

On "Making Out Your Income Tax" 234

On "Watch Your Step" 237

On "Little Shavers" 239

On "Killing the Pig" 241

On "The Pussy-Willow" 244

On "The Title and the Family".. 246

On "Confessions of a Smoker" 249

On "The Unit op Service" 252

On "Down and Not Out" 254

On "The Eternal Sbarch"._ 256

On "Gentleness as a Practice" 259

On "Some Stoic Philosophy" 261

On "Good Majors and Bad" 263

On "When I Am Tired" 266

On "Searching Your Neighbor's Past" 268

JUST TALKS
ON COMMON THEMES

ON "LET'S GO FISHING"

ET'S GO a-fishing.

I did not say that first.
The birds said it; the green grass said it;
the bud on the tree said it ; the wind soft in
your face with a thin odor of the fields, said
it; the spring rain on the roof said it, or
rather sang it, as you have heard it before on some
night when you lay before the open fire in camp and
heard the high-powered gales blow off the big lake and
the branches of the trees softly brushing the roof
overhead.

No man who loves to go fishing can be wholly bad.
He cannot, in the reason of things, get near to Nature
and fail to look up to the hills and contemplate his own
place in the immensity of creation — dependent, transi-
tory, a mystery among mysteries — and feel that
there is a God. The wind! What a strange thing it
is! The sky! How strange and awesome a roof!
The waters! How stirred with music against the
beaches! The blue hills, how beautiful! The rain-
clouds and the sun, so full of glory ! Is there any man
who sits back in his boat and fishes, not feeling that he
is an almoner of God ? Is there any man who does not
know that the town and his small belongings therein,
be they millions, are very trifling by the side of the
Power that put the color in the lake-side grasses, that
tinted the spring leaflets on the willows and made the
very fish that he is seeking with his lure, so lithe and
beautiful !

You and I have a right to go fishing. We have it
just because it is a part of the religion of the out-of-
doors. Not even the Hun has a right to forbid it. It
is a thing — this right — that we will fight for if need
be. It is a right because it is symbolic of peace and
freedom. It is a right because it teaches men to be

4 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

kind and good. It is a right because it softens and
betters manhood. It is a right because we love it so.

The same with all Nature. We owe her all that we
owe motherhood. Out of her being came we — back to
her bosom we return. To her side we should go as
often as we can. It is not fishing exactly — not the
struggle, the patient game, the lure and the strike and
the prey that I mean by fishing. It is the prospect,
the preparation, the journey, the first sight of wild
country, the clean odor of the forest, the distant vistas,
the first glimpse of the blue, rippling waters of the
lakes. What a thrill. How the true fisherman's heart
leaps ! What ecstacy as he sits him down for the first
time each year by the rusty old camp-nook and ingle.
What memories. What forgotten faces. What dear
friends of long ago whose faces shine out of the dusky
corners of the old camp! Gone! Not — if we fisher-
men know it. Such sacred friendships were never
born to be buried in oblivion. No ! They were created
to be renewed beyond the purple peaks remote, in new
domains where lakes beneficent will wait for anglers,
yet.

Let's go fishing.

We shall come back renewed. It will be like going
to "blighty" out of the trenches. We shall be the bet-
ter for it when we return.

Let's go fishing.

ON "BEING A MARTIAL-FIGGER"

OU rarely see an old chap like me or a sawed-
off chap (one of the deferred-growth class)
who has not a very strong martial spirit.
They are certainly a warlike lot. And
always were.

I used to march, in Masonic parades — or at
least I did once. It was in Skowhegan. I have told
the story once or twice to listening throngs and most of
the throng have been very patriotic, for quite a spell
thereafter. If I could get it into a four-minute speech,
I think it would sell bonds for liberty.

When we marched in Skowhegan we had a short
hike — only about thirty miles or so — on a medium
warm day, say about 132 degrees in the shade. We
were in light marching order — two luncheons, one din-
ner, three collations and the contents of four lemonade
barrels in each man. Being a Sir Knight, I wore a
chapeau several sizes too large with a tendency to slip
around sidewise and present a front view like Geo.
Washington crossing the Delaware. Looked at from
any angle, with the plume on the starboard side and
the knightly emblem of the cross, on the port, I was a
natty sight. I also wore a man-size sword, which hung
from a belt that was made for a large person — the out-
fit being borrowed. The sword hung down, therefore,
in a sort of discouraged and depressed way, and the
belt not having the proper friction against my abdo-
men (and I not having any abdomen) it likewise slipped
around in sympathy with my chapeau and got between
my legs — so that really it was hard to tell sometimes
which way I was marching — hard for me — ^harder for
the Eminent Commander who as much as said that I
was no ornament to the parade. I wanted to be mili-
tary and Knightly and I tried to be, but it was impos-
sible, with only two hands, to keep my hat with the

6 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

pointed end in front and my sword at my side. I kept
both hands going and both legs going ; and that was all
any one Sir Knight could be expected to do.

I was in the rear rank. There were four of us, in
the rear rank. Two Sir Knights, a boy on a bicycle and
a man selling hot Frankfurts. It was very dusty.
After we passed the fifteenth milepost, the bicycle got
a hot-box and fell out. On the twentieth mile, the
frankfurts began to explode with the heat and one of
them struck my companion on the baldric and he fell
out. After that I brought up in the rear all alone. I
never saw it dustier. I hustled along working hands
and feet just as fast as lightning — now straightening
my hat and now pulling my sword out of my shoes and
leaping over it, anon — I will repeat that word anon —
doing my best. The head of the parade was ahead of
me — that much I knew. Occasionally, I heard the far-
off music of a band. Now and then I saw the form of
a comrade, his plume nodding in the dust. And then,
weary of adjusting my hat, I let it slide where it would
over my nose and walked on, now in the darkness, now
in the light, as the chapeau slid.

Along about six o'clock in the evening — as it seemed
to me, I met a man and asked him if he had seen a
Masonic parade. He said he understood it was yes-
terday. I told him that I thought he was mistaken
and would he inquire, because I surely started today
and if I had been walking all night, I wanted to know
it. He said he would and he did, and returning, said
that I was right. It was still today, not yesterday.
He brought a kind woman along and she said she had
seen the parade, but that they all wore their hats dif-
ferent. My sword then suddenly became tangled in my
legs as I endeavored to assume a military appearance
and I stumbled visibly as I passed on my way in the
parade, leaving the man and woman behind.

I caught up with my command at the twenty-ninth

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 7

mile by getting a ride on a grocery cart — ^the boy driv-
ing frantically. I fell in gracefully. Falling in or
over was the best thing I did. I was received with en-
thusiasm. My appearance was surely chic. I was
carrying my sword on my shoulder. That is all I re-
member until we were dressing up on the right in front
of the Skowhegan Town Hall and the band was playing
"Onward, Christian Soldiers."

That night we had a dance in the Skowhegan Town
Hall and the next day we marched all day between
Waterville and Fairfield, most of the time encircling
graveyards. Since then I have not marched. Today,
I sit in my slippered years, thinking of my experiences
in the battle line. And I know that, if those old lines
could be reformed and I could be attired as I was then,
in that identical costume and placed on the Western
front, and the Germans could see me coming as I went
thru the streets of Skowhegan, the sight would so
freeze the marrow of their bones as to give me free
pathway to Berlin, and Berlin itself would evacuate and
the Kaiser would plead louder than ever for Peace.

ON "A TOAST TO THE FLAG"

GIVE you today a Toast to the Flag of our
Country — the Flag that has set the whole
world free.

I give you this Flag, with all its history.
The Flag of the first republic on earth to
make the People superior to the State and to
declare that all white men are free and equal under the
law. The first Flag to cleanse its folds from the dark
stain of human slavery, in the blood of its heroes. The
first Flag to sail the seas, free and unmolested. The
first Flag to go journeying forth, across the broad
prairies beyond the Mississippi ; to ripple forth in all its
glory from the lofty, snow-clad peaks of the Rockies
and to blazon in the sunshine of the great Northwest
along the trail of Fremont and Clark. The first Flag
to float over enfranchised Cuba and Hawaii, redeemed.
The first Flag to greet the silent dawn in the vast,
interminable wastes of the North Pole.

I give you this Flag, with all its symbols. Its red,
as of the blood of heroes, living and dead, who have
loved it and defended it. Its blue, as of the sheen of
the restless seas, that encompass and protect it. Its
white, as of the clear day ; the union of all of the colors
of the spectrum ; the peaks of her transcendent moun-
tains and the drifting snows of her prairie wastes —
Aye ! White — clear thru. The Flag that reached into
the Heavens ; plucked the field of azure and the stars
for symbols and then set the American Eagle above it.
to watch, with tireless and searching eye, that not a
star be dimmed or desecrated.

I give you this Flag, with all its hopes and prayers ;
its Faith and Purpose. The bright Flag ; the cheerful
Flag; the undying, the courageous and the merciful
Flag. The Flag, that rose triumphant from the sea,
where the Lusitania went down. The Flag that flung

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 9

its protecting folds over the widowed, the fatherless
and the homeless in stricken Belgium. The Flag
that would not yield a single foot in the terrible
storm of St. Mihiel, but ever advanced! The Flag
that has limned the face of the pitying Christ, tri-
umphant yet sorrowful in the work of Mercy where
the wounded and the dying lay in long rows amid the
gathering shadows of the night. The Flag that the
little children of the world love and do not fear. The
Flag that spells a new-found liberty to the oppressed of
all lands. The Flag that has never touched the ground
or been set beneath the feet of Tyrant Hun or Un-
speakable Turk.

I give you, Americans, the world over — our Flag!
The Flag of a Free People. The Flag of an undying
Union of sovereign states joined together in the yet
greater Sovereignty of a Nation. I give you this Flag,
with its history, its achievement, its ideals ! The Flag
of the United States of America.

ON "MAKE YOUR WIFE A PARTNER'

ET US talk in a common and possibly practical
way about using woman's brains and busi-
ness acumen more commonly than is now
being done.

Most wives are given no chance to show
whether they have any business sagacity or
not. If the wife asks her husband what is troubling
him in his business he replies that if he told her she
would not understand. He thinks he is the main-show
and the side-shows thrown in. He probably never
gives his wife a cent of money that she does not have to
beg for and he has kept her so that she does not know
the difference between a promissory note and a bank-

10 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

check. He says that she is extravagant. She says that
she has to grovel so for a cent, that she will be darned
if she won't be extravagant when she can get the
money. Thus many a marriage, otherwise happy,
goes to the bad.

Women, who are actually doing independent mer-
cantile or industrial business, go bankrupt less fre-
quently, on the average, than do men. The founder of
the Vanderbilt fortune was a woman. The father of
the old Commodore Vanderbilt, Cornelius by name, was
a poor business man. He lived by selling produce to
the people of the city of New York, then a community
of about 80,000. The family lived on Staten Island.
The old man Vanderbilt was a truck peddler and a small
farmer. And he failed at that. The farm went bank-
rupt under his supervision and was to be sold for debt.

But it happened that the wife in that household had
financial ability. She had been allowed a small sum
for housekeeping and had been able to invest a little of
it in hens and she had kept books. So, when old Van-
derbilt came miauling around and saying that the old
home must be sold, Madame Vanderbilt said to him, "0,
I don't know." And dragging down the family sock,
she dug into it and extracted $3,000 in gold, of which
her husband knew nothing. Out of this, the old home
was saved — ^just like the movies. When she died she
left $50,000 in cash. It was she who started Cornelius
in the way of making money, by advancing him the
capital for his ferry that netted him $1,000 the first
year and laid the foundation for his millions.

And yet there are a lot of pin-heads who think a
woman cannot possibly know how to do business in a
proper way. They seem to think that God cornered
the brains in man. A man's wife should be his partner
in a going concern, the business of keeping house and
saving money reasonably. The rounders and the booz-
ers and the proselyters have very little in common with

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 11

their wives and want less. They consider that what
they earn is theirs and a part of what the wife earns is
also theirs and then what they can borrow, both owe.
The news-dispatches, the other day, relate that a man
over in New Hampshire, shot his wife because supper
wasn't ready. There is more excuse for that than there
is for not giving a woman her share of the joint earn-
ings of the firm of "Wife and I." In the case of the
wife who did not get supper, she was a quitter on the
job. She should not be killed — of course — ^but she
ought to be fined her week's allowance.

So — sine 3 we are working for peace, comfort,
beauty, joy, human betterments, we ought to make use
of the vast amount of woman's brains, lying idle
around the house. Give her a chance to show what she
can do in running the finances of the family. Turn
over to her a fair amount of cash per week and make
her keep books on it. Let her have her own bank-ac-
count and draw her own checks and paddle her own
financial canoe — yea, even let her buy her own hats
and gowns and pay for them. She can do it if you
divide fairly. I know a woman who runs her own
house on a fair allowance for keeping her husband as
a boarder and now she has so much money in the bank
that he is borrowing it at fair rate of interest. It is a
certainty, that if your wife has the business-skill as so
many of them have — all unsuspected — you can turn in
less money and have more at the end of a year than you
would think possible — and live better, too.

Try it ! Try it ! It will end all your bickering over
money.

ON "THE BUTTERFLY AND THE PIG"

HE BUTTERFLY meandered softly thru the
air and settled on the pig's oif ear.

There you were — the utility and the beauty
of life. The butterfly was all one with the
day — yellow and gold, mingled with the em-
erald of leaves, blinking in amber sunlight.

The philosopher who was there looking over the side
of the pen asked of the Bates Senior what he thought
of the uses of each. The Senior thought that each was
useful — to the limit.

We have a term for idle people — gay butterflies.
We have a term for supremely selfish people — pigs.
People to whom the terms are applied are a disgrace to
the creatures for whom they are misnamed.

It is safe to say that the Lord knew what he was
about when He made the butterfly so beautiful. I
rather think He spread himself when He made a field-
violet or painted a sky of deep azure in a June day.
But I am not so sure that He had anything to do about
it, when He made a man or woman who has developed
into a vain, selfish, overdressed and extravagant dandy
or fashionable. So, too, with the Pig in human form.
A pig is a very useful animal. He is all right in his
way. So it is hard on the butterfly and hard on the
pig, to make them bear the name of thinking-beings
who have merely imitated the super-characteristics of
the butterfly and the pig and know nothing of their
aspirations to serve the world, in their humble way.

The mission of the butterfly is plainly to exemplify
beauty while it is performing its functionary part in
the natural system — maintaining some balance of Na-
ture. The philosophies mention three essentials — ^the
Good, the Beautiful and the True. One of the elements

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 13

for which the World war was fought is the beautiful.
We went into it on this side of the Atlantic, at
least, for "The beauty of the Lilies that were born
across the sea." The beauty of ideals, the beauty of
home and liberty — the world safe for Democracy and
a Democracy safe for the world — a beautiful thing.

The human butterfly and the human pig are not do-
ing much for this ideal. The human butterfly rides
around in his limousine with a horde of servants to
look after him ; to dress him and to undress him ; with
every thought for himself, including evasion of duty
and work.

The human pig keeps his nose in his profiteering
trough and grunts whenever anyone asks him to stop
feeding long enough to look at the world as it is. If
you ask him to "give until it hurts" he says "No!
Lemme alone. This feeding out of the trough is a
matter of business with me." The earth may rock with
thunder of the cannon, the sound of his eating may be
punctuated with the groans of the dying and the sob-
bing of wives and mothers who have given their all —
what's that to him ? He is making money and hanging
onto it. He will lift his nose and enjoy himself when
the war is over. Poor thing — with bristles on him.
He does not know that he will never be anything but a
pig until he stops feeding. He does not stop to think
that some day the heirs will cut him up into sparerib ;
smoke him for bacon and salt him down for pork.
Their only eulogy upon him will be that he "cut up
profitably."

Now if the pig — the human pig, I mean, will only
look at the butterfly's beauty and, as it flies away from
his off-ear, try to emulate the subtle suggestion of
God's wonderful message of a spiritual life beyond the
material; and if the human butterfly will look at the
industrious pig eating away to the increase of the
world's material welfare, and will emulate his industry.

14

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

we shall have that middle ground of human betterment
which is the average of usefulness.

All of which is the purpose of this allegory of the
butterfly that meandered to the pig's ear and alighted
there and flew hence, like jewels in the sunshine.

ON "DOGS-IN-GENERAL"

HERE is a dog, over in my neighborhood in Au-
burn, which is a "dog-in-general." He will go
with anyone. You glance at him as you pass
by and give him any kind of encouragement
and he gets up, with a purposeful air, and,
waving his tail, trudges along with you.
There is something about him that one cannot help
liking. His eye has a look like that of a small boy
chasing a circus parade. His tail seems to be hung on
ball bearings. He walks cross-legged, just to show you
that he has accomplishments. He looks foolish and
acts foolish, but he is a good dog in general.

Dogs, in general, are various. But a "dog-in-gen-
eral" is a dog without a master. He is a tramp dog.
He is like some people, no special attachments to any
person or place, but a friend of every one. You see
such people. They are what the French call "vaurien,"
good for nothing except that they are kind, loving and
wistful and see far ahead, down the dusty road of life,
strange things that they want to see and for which
they are willing to trudge along with you to fare with
you in all adventure. This dog that I know in Auburn
has been across the Atlantic ocean six times in the big
liner, chasing soldiers to the great war. Every time
he saw a soldier in khaki, he got up and took his burden
of travel and went along with him. He had a soul
attuned to the mysteries of the unknown. He was not

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 15

built for the fireside, but for the big places of earth.
He wanted to enlist but they did not take bull-terriers.
If he had been a man he would have been "over there"
in 1914.

I have seen these dogs-in-general that went around
with nobody but boys. They had good masters who
fed them and liked them but whom they would quit any
time — especially on a roving summer afternoon, or
some subtle day in June — to go with any boy. The
more ragged the boy, the better the dog liked him!
The dog would prefer to go along by the side of some
meandering brook ; to lie in the warm sunshine ; to kick
up his heels ; to bury his face in the warm, sweet turf ;
to dig for the woodchuck; to chase sticks and stones
thrown in the swimmin' hole — in short just a boy's dog
— never a man's dog. Any human nature about such a
dog? Anything in an "onery" dog to remind you of
some folks you have known ? That dog would never go
to war. He would not be interested; but he would
make a good boy-scout dog. Faithful — to boys! No
name for his devotion. Did you ever see one of those
big, good-natured chaps in your old-time country-town
who always collected all of the boys? Nature-loving
men who liked youth. Well — the boy-dog is a cousin
of that chap.

I don't know as this amounts to anything — but I
want to put in, as the moral to this dog's tale, a plea
for leniency to the harmless person-in-general. There
are many of them, whose chief weakness is inconstancy.
If constancy be left out of a dog or a man, what
are we going to do about it? They are wanderers —
that's all. Drifting here, drifting there, doing nothing
much, until some time as I once saw in the case of a
dog-in-general, they leap into the sea to save a child,
they spring into the breach to stop a flood, they come
along when the house is burning and leap into the
flames to rescue a life. And then away they go — seek-

16 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

ing new adventures, forgetting their own heroisms.
Into this war at last have gone many of them. Wan-
derers who have been here and there over the face of
the earth looking for the Great Adventure ! They have
found it — over there — in the trenches, brave, careless,
happy-go-lucky souls face to the foe, eyes bright, lips
wreathed in smiles — ^just as tho thru the veil that was
rent by the searching bullet, they saw brighter and yet
brighter dusty highways, stretching on and on forever-
more, in which it was ever summer, with the birds
a-caroling and the soft winds lifting the damp ringlets
about their brows.

ON "THE SACRIFICE OF THE ROSE"

AM LEANING over the railing of the garden
looking at the June rose. My neighbor who
lost an arm in the Civil War, Spottsylvania,
is there ahead of me and seems deep in
thought. He is over seventy years old — but
not so old as the rose-bush. "What do you
think of it ?" I ask. "I don't know," is the reply. "But
God did not make it for nothing, neither the rose nor
the briar. There's something behind it."

So here was a man who, almost sixty years ago,
shed his brother-man's blood in war, standing silent in
adoration of a June rose. Maybe, after all, it came
very near to typifying some of the things for which he
fought — peace in the garden for the rose to bloom, the
dooryard to the plain man's home undisturbed, the trig
wife in the doorway, the silence of the night in which
the perfume of the flowers may pass and repass his pil-
low unmixed with poison gases.

"I wonder why," said I to the old soldier, "I wonder
why God made the rose, if He made it for something

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 17

and not for nothing? Why did He bother to make
beautiful things ? Why did He not fill the world with
meat and drink, iron and copper, lumber and brick, ex-
clusively ? Why did He not make mountains of dyna-
mite and smokeless powder and have all His trees bear
bayonets and rifles ! Why did He make fields of green
grass when He might have made them of cement so as
to move great guns the more quickly, that other men
might be blown to atoms the more expeditiously ? We
do not need buttercups and daisies! We do not re-
quire golden sunsets and the aurora. All that we re-
quire is the superman ; the food for him and the weap-
ons in his grasp."

"The meek shall inherit the earth," was the reply.
And then he shouldered his cane and walked away.

And so I came back to thinking about the reasons
for beauty and perfume and kindness. And I asked
myself if the secret of the world is sacrifice. Out of
this war, what big thing abides? Is it not sacrifice?
Are we not all learning what it means to think of oth-
ers and serve others? Does not Duty point its finger
at you out of the storm of nations and speak to you
saying, "Sacrifice." If the secret of the world is sacri-
fice (and by "secret of the world" I mean the secret of
evolution spiritually and materially), then beauty takes
its place and meekness does inherit. The story of birth
is sacrifice and suffering. Travail is a part of all devel-
opment. The plant itself gives of itself in reproduc-
tion and many of them die in so doing. The mother
gives of her own life to the child. Have you read that
majestic paragraph out of Charles Darwin, the sum-
mary of his theories on evolution and the survival of
the fittest? The mossy bank that Darwin brings into
his picture, is peopled with almost infinite variety of
animal, vegetable, insect and other life. But every
living organism is sacrificing to perpetuate its kind.
It is building a world thru death for the world's sake.

18 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

If this be the plan, then every living organism has its
place and man is among them — dying for the advance-
ment of the world as a whole.

And who shall inherit? It is the meek, who, by
giving here and there ; who, by yielding to the necessi-
ties; who, by sacrifice and by rebirth, spiritually and
materially shall perpetuate his kind. The first cave-
man fought. He was strong. He passed on — con-
quered by two cavemen who combined, each sacrificing
something that the other might live. Tribe united
with tribe and by concessions became strong. The
state was born. And so on. But never was it the
superman. It was ever the union of men and women
each sacrificing, each working for others.

And it was for this that God made the rose and
many other lovely emblems of beauty. He might have
made a handsomer thing than the rose but probably
did not see the need of it. It blooms just as fairly in
the waste places as in the garden ; just as lovely in the
garden of the poor as in the garden of the rich. It
gives itself a sacrifice to that ideal of beauty and of
sweetness which is the type of Heaven on earth. We
are going thru grievous times. But we must not lose
hold of the eternal truth "that our light affliction,
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look
not at the things which are seen but at the things
which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are
temporal ; but the things that are not seen are eternal."

Back of the Rose is God's eternal edict of victory
thru sacrifice. The meek shall inherit the earth.

ON "WOMEN'S BACK HAIR"

VE was the original Jane — with her golden hair
a-hanging down her back. I have seen sev-
eral pictures of Eve — surreptitiously — and
she had lovely hair, always arranged with
seeming carelessness but with as much re-
gard for decency as was possible under the
circumstances. I have always wondered what the pho-
tographers would have done in the Garden of Eden, if
Eve had persisted in doing her hair up high.

A good many people still think that a woman's hair
looks well, flowing down around her waist. But women
seem to find it mussy and, as a rule, are inclined to
differ with Eve as to coiffure. If you should look over
any of the "Histories of Fashions" in the different
ages, you would find a great many peculiar structural
complications in head-dresses. And the more we look
at them, the more we are inclined to believe that the
simpler they are, the better.

It is no business of mine — of course — ^how women
"do up" their back hair, so long as they do it up in the
boudoir ; but when they come to the office and keep do-
ing it up all day, it wearies the flesh. Some of the
girls nowadays peer out between their coiffure like a
Spitz dog thru his matted locks. They have succeeded
in training some of their hair to curl out around their
ears and about six inches past their noses and it takes
a good deal of time to keep it there. They have to stop
between your impassioned declarations, "Your letter of
the 15th inst. rec'd and in reply will state," to curl that
spit-lock around their fingers; look around and see if
their abbreviated skirts have gone to ballooning since
last heard from, and then, settling themselves again in
the chair, will calmly go on to write: "Your letter of
the 15th incident received." In general, the more hair
and the farther front it protrudes and the more it is

20 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

marcelled — the less efficiency and the poorer spelling.

Venus de Milo was another rather good looking girl.
Next to Eve whom we admire for maternal reasons, she
was perhaps as good looking as they make. Well —
Venus did not seemingly waste any time on her hair.
It was drawn back in a neat wave ; pugged up and there
it stayed. She said to Jupiter one day, "Jupe, believe
me, I am one of those women who NEVER touch their
hair, from morning to night." And Jupiter said, "Veen,
you suit me from the ground up." Venus has been rea-
sonably successful. She has had stars named for her ;
she has been put up at a good many clubs, in marble.
Why, then, cannot the modern woman follow her ex-
ample and find some sort of static condition of hair.
Why do they move the terminal-station of the hair,
otherwise the "pug" from side to side, from back to
front and literally "go over the top" with it every three
months. You and I recall when it hung low on the
horizon over the coat-collar ; then it leaped to the bridge
of the nose; then it hung over the left ear and then
over the right. Then it was obliterated altogether and
made into an impressionistic picture of a hay-field after
the grass was cut. Then it was Psychied or Clytied or
otherwise "tied" and stuck out several feet due west
into the horizon. Then it was puffed out at the side
until a girl, coming head on, looked like a yacht with
her spinnaker and ballooner set, coming down before
the wind. Then it developed nets and rats and looked
like a bag of meal on the noble front of loveliness.
Then it cultivated a suggestion of wilful disorder, a
sort of zephyr-blown carelessness, like a ball of yarn,
both ends of which have been lost in the knitting. And
now — marvel of marvels, it is hiding the ears and will
next be curled around the lip into an imitation mus-
tache and around the chin into feminine whiskers, a la
spinach.

Hear me again, 0 fellow-countryman ! I do not care

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 21

a damb (revised spelling) about it, but the other day I
saw a young woman with fine, well-groomed hair,
drawn neatly back and not a single, up-to-date chorus
girl, Mrs. V. Castle flummididdle about it and I was
happy all day long. And I went home and took down
the picture of my grandmother with her hair worn at
eighty exactly as it was worn at twenty, and I said to
it, "Grandmother ! I understand now. The reason you
accomplished so much in your life is because you did
not have to devote twenty-five per cent of your time to
studying some new place to put that dear old pug."

ON "THE SHRINES OF HOME"

OMEWHERE in every shrine of motherhood is
a tiny pair of baby's first boots — crumpled
little things, wet with a mother's kisses.

After that, boys' boots especially do not
get much of a show as mementoes. They
come and go — the little affairs — clomping

and making much weary noise, but yet greatly missed
after they are silent, the boy in bed — or perhaps
slipped out of his mother's arms to lie long and still in
the trenches under the poppy-fields of France.

AVhat if they should come back and stand at atten-
tion along the old, yellow-painted kitchen floor back of
the stove again as they stood in days of yore, all in a
row. Perhaps it would make the tears come and per-
haps they would often be chased away by smiles. And
the girls' boots, too ! Good girls, wayward girls, sweet
girls, girls with flying hair, girls with sunshine in their
eyes. Girls gone ! Girls that may come back !

Here is a pair of old-fashioned copper-toed, red-
topped boots with an inscription on the top — "For a
Good Boy !" Those were the boots that father took in

22 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

hand forty years ago when he took his first-born son to
the shoe-store for a first pair of kip winter boots. Dad
was about as proud of them as the boy was. He
wanted to know of the dealer if they were "real kip."
"Yessir! Warranted." Those boots came home and
were worn with self -consciousness. Men on the street
would see them and suggest "Seems to me I smell
leather." A boy would stand around waiting for com-
ments on his new boots. Cute little boots, were they
not — especially at night as soaked with the snow and
wet by the mud they stood with little up-turned toes,
back of the old kitchen stove.

You can see the little chap going about in the morn-
ing with his fingers in the straps trying to get the
shrunken things on. He kicks on the base-boards and
sweats at the straps. And at the night-time, what a
ceremonial pulling off the boots — ^bootjacks and small
boys assisting. It was some fun to back up to dad,
take his number ten between your legs, grab hold of
heel and toe and have him propel you forward with a
foot on the dome of your little trousers. And the other
ceremonial was getting out the tallow and the lamp-
black and greasing them so that they would shine and
resist the wet. We were very dressy when we had
half an inch of mutton tallow on top of the old kip
boots.

Do we live much outside of the children, after all ?
Something tender, something indescribably sweet and
hopeful invests the soul as we ponder on the life that
comes and the life that passes on thru childhood to
eternal youth, elsewhere. The little feet that ran at
play, that climbed into the lap of parenthood, that
stumbled often on the way, that went yet more and
more sedately as the years came and went and that,
perchance, have now turned with cadence of music and
waving of flags to the call of high duty into the way
that leads away from the village streets into great

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 23

duty and perhaps the great sacrifice — what wonder
that somehow they mean more to us than anything
else, on the home-altars !

Small wonder, then, that baby's first boots should
be the material memento in so many homes. In these
hours, to take them out and recreate the dimpled little
thing that snuggled under the heart; that had such
fair blue eyes and such flaxen curls; that grew up at
last and went away forever, is to live over again the
elysium of young life in the shrine of the family. And
it is this vision that leads us to take oath that by sacri-
fice and by giving and by fighting we shall forever
maintain the right to have these fair flowers of our
lives come to full beauty and fruition; in short, that
government of the people, by the people and for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.

ON "MAINE AND MIDSUMMER"

0 LIE on a haycock and watch the cloud-wrack
in the sky ; to follow the gulls as, lazily, they
wheel above; to watch the blue sea heave
afar; to feel the perfume of each dawn and
catch the healing breath of every sunset; to
live as fully and happily as one may live in
these days of blood — this in Maine, in midsummer.

What other land approaches it in beauty! No
tropic country with eternal sunshine; no land of roses
all the year around ; no valley of the "blest" compares
with this rugged land of hills and mountains, lakes and
running brooks, in its midsummer garb. Incompar-
able Maine !

This week we have felt, for the first time, the sense
of the midsummer noon. The year has run thru its
eleventh hour and now sleeps in the silence and the

24 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

heat of that hour when, like the old-fashioned Maine
village, everything is closed, the store-keepers gone
home, the streets quiet. The summer haze lies upon
the fields; the buttercups and the daisies yellow and
whiten the rolling hills; the music of the mowing-
machine comes up from the intervales; the yellow-
birds flutter thru the roadside trees ; the wild rose nods
and kisses its petals to you along the hedges; the
brooks run noisily beneath the old bridges ; the gardens
lift their blossoms as if to say "plenty ;" the blue moun-
tains smile as if beckoning you on ; the hills lift you up
and up until they reveal the glimpses of the sea, the
estuaries and the bays, that run landward from the
sea; and everywhere, cooling in the breeze, comes the
perfume of the sweet grass and the new-mown hay
upon your senses.

Midsummer! Already the first glimpses of the
golden-rod in the fields! Already that lazy sense of
ripening-warmth, of Nature putting in her work. The
heat in town ; the buzzing automobiles along the coun-
try-highways with number-plates bearing the names
of all the forty-eight states in the Union as they come
and go ; the thronging crowds on trains running double-
sections; the congestion at ferries where there are
crossings of rivers more peaceful than the Marne — all
these tell of the peak of the year, when Nature stays a
while and waits, delaying the chirp of the cricket and
the first touch of that diviner-yet period of sweet drop-
ping away to winter that we call Autumn.

Who would live elsewhere — once having lived in
Maine? Who would exchange this midsummer, this
autumn ; this drowsy, dreamy age of life in Maine for
any other, when in the distance, he sees as we who love
it so well, ever do see, the coming of the first snows ; the
Thanksgiving season crisp and cool, the first snows
tinkling against the windows; the incomparable con-
trast of winter! Which do we love the better! We

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 25

can hardly say. If midsummer with its elysian days
is sweet, so, too, is the clear, cold, pure, healthy, whole-
some winter season, when the snows lie white along
the country roads ; when in the blazing noon, it is sil-
ver and in the light of the winter moon it is golden,
even to the end of the world !

And so — let us forever tell the truth about our
M-aine. Let us praise its beauties, as they deserve to
be praised, and do it everywhere we go. Too many res-
idents of Maine speak with a half -apologetic tone, in
mentioning the fact that they reside here. Its history
is the oldest and the most aristocratic of the states.
It was settled before Plymouth. It has been the bat-
tle-ground of civilization while newer states were in
the wilderness. It has peopled the Nation with brains
and brawn. It has done its part loyally in every con-
flict for freedom, truth, nationalism and ideals. And
here it is — fairer than ever, with its forests deep and
mystic, with its country-side like a garden, with its
sea-coast cupped with harbors and with its rivers rich
in power.

Apologize ! Instead we should hold ourselves as of
the elect of the Lord; favored in opportunity; guard-
ians of a heritage that is priceless. And all this, from
the noon of a midsummer day, that is not midsummer
madness.

ON "GOING TO THE DENTIST"

LL I have to say about it is this. Some things
have to be borne. You may be permitted to
die peacefully, or otherwise, in your bed with
your vermiform appendix still in your little
inside, but, alas! a man cannot die of the
toothache. Would that he could, but cases
are rare. Death rarely visits with its balm, the person
who has the toothache or the person who is sea-sick.

If people could die with the toothache, the dentist
would have a harder time. As it is, rather than suffer
the ills we have, we fly to others that we know not of.
In olden times, the sign outside of the dentist's shop
was a huge tooth hanging to an iron crane over the
narrow and soiled stairway leading to his temple of
pain. The old-time dentist was never in view when
you went in. He was not surrounded by marble and
ivory and running water and nickel-plated anaesthet-
ics. Not so ! He was in the back shop making teeth ;
and if he saw you come in, he would wipe the pumice-
stone from his hands onto the seat of his trousers and
pry open your mouth before you could say Jack Robin-
son. That swinging tooth represented the exact size
of the tooth that he pulled. Every time, without fail,
when as a boy, I parted with a tooth, it measured at
least eighteen inches wide by three feet and a half long.
Treating the subject subjectively, there are some
very good thoughts to be promulgated about the rela-
tion of the individual to the dentist — especially the old-
fashioned tooth-puller. G. H. Derby, a humorist of
national repute in his day, told a story about Dr. Tush-
worth, a dentist, that is but little known. The Doctor
tackled a tooth once that he could not pull. The patient
kicked some about the abortive effort. Doc Tushworth
felt that a patient had no right to complain about little
things like that — his business was to yank the molar.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 27

So he invented a machine that worked by levers and
exerted an enormous pull. When he pried open the
patient's mouth and put in the active end of the ma-
chine and exerted a few hundred pounds of pressure,
he noticed that the patient's right foot flew up in the
air. He didn't understand the reason but he did
not stop to make investigation. He added a ton or
two more pull on the machine and the man's head
pulled right smack off ! at his collar button. Of course
"doc" got the tooth even if he lost the man.

An investigation followed and they dissected the
remains and found that, as we often feel about it our-
selves, the man's tooth ran down into his body all of
the way, pursuing a path down his right leg and having
two prongs that were clinched over on the sole of the
foot. That's why the right foot flew up when the doc
began to pull. It saved the doc's reputation and got
him off with a charge of justifiable homicide. The doc
subsequently pulled on an old lady's tooth with this
machine and yanked out her whole skeleton. He took
her home in a pillow case. It happened that she did
not die, so the doc was again lucky. And what was
better, she lived seven years, known as the "India rub-
ber lady" and was completely cured of rheumatism of
the bones — having no bones to ache.

These are extreme cases from the view-point of the
outsider, but perfectly credible to the man who in the
golden days sat down and permitted the dentist to grab
hold of a tooth and yank it in cold blood. Of course
things are better now. One can almost go prancing
into the door of the dentist ; but in the old days while
he went prancing all right, he did not always go in. I
have pranced miles on the dead run to the dentist's and
just as I turned the door-knob — pretty softly, too — the
toothache has stopped in contemplation of the future.
You can work that several times with some teeth.
They are as intelligent as a dog that expects a licking.

28 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I do not know as there is any moral about this talk,
but I am sure that it is not immoral and that is a good
deal. It is pleasant to know, however, that science is
doing so much for us. It is taking our arms and legs
off painlessly, removing our teeth with soothing music
of the ether and the phonograph. Some day it may do
as much for our sins and iniquities. St. Peter will
hardly know us.

ON "RESPONSIBIUTY OF A PERFECT BABY"

T IS sometimes hard to tell about the Perfect
Baby. Often it looks like its father and often
like its mother and sometimes it looks like
Grandmother Jones and frequently it is the
perfect picture of Grandfather Pinkham, and
then again it may trace back and leap over
into some other family of kin, and look like Uncle
Hiram Beebe — male or female, the responsibility for
the physical appearance of a perfect baby cannot be
definitely located. I have seen a baby that looked like
some remote grandsire — ^whiskers, hair and funny
look around the eyes.

After the relatives have located the lineaments in
remote ancestry, the responsibility for the care of
the child falls on a family council consisting
chiefly of the mother's mother who is supposed
to be very learned on the subject; the father's mother
who knows so much about children that it fairly hurts
her; the old maid aunt who knows a lot, but who
blushes to say it ; the nurse who is never any good, and
on the father, incidentally, who runs errands and inves-
tigates the different kinds of nursing bottle, with a
later preference for the automatic kind that get up in

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 29

the night themselves and heat the infant's pabulum.

There is no greater rush of business known to any
household than the accession of about nine pounds of
first child into a peaceful married life. It beats win-
ning the war or hurrying up the ship-building program
or making 12,000 aeroplanes in six months. A young
father averages to be on the dead run to and from an
apothecary shop eighteen hours out of the twenty-four
for the first six months of the worry between wind and
water of child. You can see them darting thru the
crowds anxiously looking for an opening and a drug-
gist. They carry their pocketbooks open all of the
time in their hands. If suddenly aroused while nap-
ping on a street-car, they look at you blankly and say :
"Yes, I asked for a dozen rubber-nipples." You talk
about the responsibility of a perfect baby — it is largely
on the perfect father.

Of course I am not going to say that after the nurse
goes there is not some responsibility resting on the
perfect mother. She has, of course, a very superior
article of baby to take care of, in the first place. It is
not at all like other babies— NOT AT ALL ! It is far
lovelier and far more nearly perfect and far more
precious and far more intelligent. Hence her respon-
sibility far exceeds that of any other mother who has
just common-flesh babies. I doubt if a greater effort
was made even in clearing out the St. Mihiel salient
than in a young mother's first essay, unassisted, at
bathing a damp baby in her lap. The responsibility is
enormous. If baby should suddenly leap out of her
lap! Later in life — say her fourth or fifth baby —
why she can bathe it ; read Lady Audley's secret ; knit
socks and chew gum, all at the same time, and if baby
leaps — why she catches the perfect thing on the first
bounce and never misses a stitch or loses a word or
chews a chew, less.

Of course the responsibility of a perfectly perfect

30 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

baby is greater than the responsibility for a freckled,
red-headed, colicky, yawning, criss-cross, sour-smelling
baby. Of course it is. But who ever had one of the
latter kind? Huh? Speak up! The responsibility
for the care of a perfect baby is greater than the
responsibility for a perfect husband — by a good deal.
I doubt if there is a young mother who ever regards
her husband with the same reverence after the first
baby sets up its dominion. He is distinctly and un-
avoidably a second fiddle. He is often in the way.
The responsibility of the universe seems to have sud-
denly changed. It is no longer on "Husband and
Woodrow Wilson;" it is on the perfectly precious and
lovely child.

It is sometimes said that when we go hence we shall
re-appear as little children in the celestial pastures.
We shall then know how to be perfect without discrim-
ination, without responsibility. I wonder if it will be
finer than responsible motherhood and perfect earthly
infancy !

ON "THE GOING AND THE COMING"

HE tides of earth are not more persistent than
the tides of life and nature. There is a going
and a coming; a flux and a reflux in all the
world, from nebulae to atom, from life of man
to life of star.

Progress is rhythmic. As the music of
the violin swells thru the silence, so the music of the
spheres touches the cold and silent spaces of the uni-
verse, all swinging to immutable law, balanced as finely
as the needle on the fulcrum. God is master musician,
establishing the harmonies, celestial and terrestrial.
We live in cycles, individually, socially, in civiliza-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 31

tion, in national existence. There can be no retrogres-
sion. What seems such, is the backward swing of the
curve preparatory to an advance. The sea comes and
goes ; but it always advances upon the coast-line. The
seasons come and go, but the earth itself approaches
nearer and nearer with each springtime to the purpose
for which it was ordained. There have been dark ages
in the world's existence, in which it has seemed as tho
the end had come to all advancement, only to break in
fuller glory upon some renaissance of art or learning.

This is what cheers me in this war. It seemed as
tho it were death to art, to music, to learning, to faith.
We thought it, many of us, in hours of doubt a few
years ago. Today, we see new ideals, new hopes, new
faiths, new conceptions of duty and opportunity. Out
of it are to come new liberties, new inventions, new
conservations, new commerce, new arts, new friend-
ships and from it will pass away many of the fancied
bonds between peoples, kindred in ideals but separated
by oceans and strangers by history and traditions.

It is perhaps a thin subject for your consideration,
but there is an analogy in life. We learn by troubles ;
we grow by griefs ; we develop by trials. There is no
life that has not had its fluxes and its refluxes ; its go-
ings and its comings of hope and happiness, of welfare
and distress. We watch the passing of beloved friends.
The loneliness of life pervades every surrounding.
But the new impulse is not often wanting to take up
the burdens and carry them along faithfully. The sor-
row ennobles. The grief purifies. Great artists have
been developed by suffering. Insight into hidden
things comes by sorrows. The Man of Nazareth was
such. His deeps only emphasized the heights to which
He attained.

This is a comforting thought if applied broadly and
happily. The mother who mourns a son, "over there,"
carries a new conception of life along with her. What

32 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

she has lost is partly compensated for by what she has
gained thru new Faith, pride in her son's sacrifice; joy
that she gave and gave willingly. I do not know any
leaven, working more surely for national ennoblement,
than the prayers in little homes all over the land for
repose of the souls of them who lie low in the trenches
on the Western front. The widow's weeds, the moth-
er's tears are to be the symbols of a new nation con-
ceived in pain as is the lot of motherhood.

And the substance is : do not complain at things too
bitterly and never despair ! There is good in all chast-
ening. Nothing breaks a man or woman but failure
to keep pace with the return swing of the cycle.
Watch for it and be ready. It will take you on as truly
as the world swings on by rhythmic law thru all the
precession of equinox along the pathway of the eternal
stars.

ON "THE OLD TIME DISTRICT SCHOOL"

TAUGHT school once — ^but only once. My
school was far from the madding crowd in
the midst of a snow-infested region of Maine.
It was a land of plenty — such as it was. One
could use his knife without comment for the
purpose of transferring nourishment to his
system.

I was a sophomore in college, sixteen years old ;
weight 102, flat; size immaterial. On the morning of
my arrival at the schoolhouse I found twenty-three
pupils gathered around the old box-stove in the middle
of the room. Most of the big boys had side-whiskers
or mustaches. The girls were matronly. One of
them was a red-cheeked Hebe who weighed about 192.
They ranged in height from about eight feet tall down
to pupilettes in pantalettes.

An interstate-tariff schedule of differentials on

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 33

freight, is like an A. B. C. to the job of laying out a
runniing-schedule for an ungraded district country-
school. Every scholar has a different kind of book and
wants to begin at a different place. I found an average
of three classes to each pupil, which made sixty-nine
classes for the day. Allowing an hour for recess, de-
votional exercises — ^which consisted in lugging in the
wood and lugging out the teacher — this left me 2 14-69
minutes per recitation. This seemed short, even to me.
It seemed to require condensation and intensive teach-
ing. I did both. By cultivation of the latter I came to
a point where I could hold the spelling book in one
hand ; point out the geography lesson on the map with
the other hand ; poke wood into the old box-stove with
the other hand; hold the youngest scholar on my lap
with the other hand, and wipe its nose, frequently, with
the other hand.

That youngest scholar was a puzzle to me. It was
five weeks before I knew whether it was a boy or a girl.
I was very modest and did not like to ask leading ques-
tions. It was a boy. He came to school every morn-
ing with his countenance eclipsed by a hang-over from
his breakfast. I made the mistake on the first morn-
ing of opening the business of the day, by washing the
child's face. Every m^orning in our prayers, after the
invocation "give us THIS DAY our daily bread," I men-
tally added "and molasses." Then I took the child to
the snow-bank and got it. But it kept on daily, nay,
hourly, exuding bread and molasses.

I can see that old district school now as I close my
eyes ; and, in memory, still hear the droning of its reci-
tations. The sun still shines for me in thru the tiny
old window panes on the long stove funnel, down on
those battered little desks, and gleams on the silver
snow-banks out-of-doors. In every snow-storm, I hear
the whine of the winds and the ticking of the sleet
around the corners of the little building, as it did in the

34 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

long years ago. And all of the memories are pleasant.
Those moonlit nights around the neighborhood; those
lyceums where old subjects were fiercely debated with
fervid eloquence ; those evening-readings when first the
neighborhood became acquainted with Dickens and
Thackeray. The eager thirst for learning that those
boys and girls soon came to have; the comradeship
that we engendered ; the Latin lessons after school, the
efforts to prepare for college and for normal school!
All these form a chapter in memory that nothing will
efface.

Some good, kind providence presided over the old-
fashioned district school as an institution. It may
have been in the native ability of the old New England
stock, its brains and its ambitions. But I like to think
that looking in at the window was the god of kindly
future protecting the republic and preparing its boys
and girls for higher missions ; for out of its doors have
gone good blood, fine intellectuality and high purpose
for the development of a nation, whose fruits are seen
in the ideals of this hour along the Western front.
And every now and then I meet some of my old schol-
ars of my only school, either a legislator, or a teacher,
or a lawyer, or a prosperous farmer, and to each of
them I say, "I don't know where you got it ; you didn't
learn it from me."

ON "THE NORTHWEST WIND"

UDDENLY the wind had shifted. It began to
blow in the northern windows, cool in the
night. It rattled the halliards of the flag
pole and swept things off the table.

It had been a long spell of fog at the sea-
shore and the fog-signals had been droning
for two days and the submarine patrol boats had been
thrashing along in the obscurity — ^mists wreathing

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 35

the spruces and blotting out the sun and stars.

"The Northwest wind will settle all that," said one
to himself in perfect confidence ; "for nothing else is so
sure to drive away the clouds and fogs." And sure
enough, dawn saw the finest scene that nature has to
offer at the seashore — the perfect day. To see such a
day is to live all over many dreams and find hope for
new ones. Islands and opposite shores have moved up
more than half way. There is so little obscuration in
the atmosphere that it is like distance in Colorado
mountains or in the dry deserts. A mile is like a
hundred yards. You see new things over the way.
From Squirrel Island, for instance, Monhegan, thirty
miles away or Seguin over by the Kennebec, seem to be
close enough to make possible new hand-clasps with
Mystery. We see people on what seemed hitherto un-
inhabited islands out to sea. The Northwest wind
brings us closer together.

The breaking day with a Northwest wind, means
setting forth of harbor-stayed fleets — ^fishermen, old
lumbering coasters, noisy motor-craft, pleasure yachts,
and coastwise steamers. The sails come out shining
like silver in the sea. Under foot of their streaming
bows rolls a liquid floor of ultramarine, flashing with
white tops. Everywhere the harbor is simply azure
like the sky, with shining waves white-capped. It
sparkles and seems alive. It is snappy and makes you
think of the bending sail and the lee-shore. Every old
coaster acts like a racer. She trims her sails nattily
and tries to work a bit more speed out of the old boat.
You hear them singing at the hauls. The day's in the
dawn, the dawn's at seven and all's well with the world.
It is good to be alive — heaven has not forgotten earth
but has opened a crack of the door and let a little of its
radiance down on earth and sea. And the clouds are
fine and the sky is high and the trees are thrashing in
pure fun of wrestling with the keen old northwest sum-
mer breeze.

36 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

We have fogs in the soul and fogs in the intellect
and fogs in the home, as well as at the sea-shore.
Shift the wind. Make it a northwester. You can do
it. If the soul is sluggish, find with some spiritual,
kindred soul the new breath that shifts the current of
your being. If your mind is fogged, give it a breath
of the west wind by a change of venue. If there are
fogs in the home ! — Simple enough ! Get the folks up
into the hills ; let them see new lands ; let them feel the
touch of the eternal morning; let them forget the sor-
did cares and, in recreation and rest, even but for a
day, restore the sunshine to the home; set the waves
of love and companionship into motion ; make a sparkle
to the floor of life and clear the atmosphere of mists
and misunderstanding, so that you can see more clear-
ly, than before, the lovelight in each other's eyes. The
weary wife, the petulant children, the tired husband!
Fogs ! fogs ! all around the home ! Let in the northwest
wind. Change the currents of thought and feeling.
Love is the last thing to pass in vthe mist — its eyes
shining bright. It will be the first thing to return,
when the mists have blown away in the northwest
wind.

And then all your harbored fleets can set out with
a following breeze. New cargoes, of all sorts, ambi-
tions, faiths, hopes, courage, consideration, forgive-
ness, sacrifice, patience, peace, and all with a song on
the lips just as the sailors sing of a clear morning out
of port bound for new havens beyond the headlands.

ON "THOUGHTS ON THE HEN"

AVING spent a portion of the day recently
waiting for the arrival of a dumfingle for the
carborundum of a Ford car, held in meticu-
lous suspension in a farmer's dooryard, I had
an opportunity to study the way of the hen;
and she is in the way most of the time.
The hen seems to me to lack purpose. She has
neither the definite nor determined aim that she should
have, to be made into a text. The rooster has a rather
better aim than the hen, but even the rooster lacks the
art of going in a straight line. He side-steps and
scratches gravel and sidles up and shows off a whole lot
— like some people — ^before he arrives. The hen
makes no pretence of knowing where she is going ; and
hence is less subtle. She is plainly without steering
apparatus, either mental or moral.

There was a very handsome hen over beyond our
weary Ford, which traveled around in a semi-circle. If
this hen started for the water-bucket over by the barn,
she took a course directly away from the bucket and
finally arrived there by running across the road to es-
cape two automobiles that almost ran over her. She
then returned to the yard, reached the water by a trip
around the barn, when all the while the straight course
would have been devoid of danger and obviously nearer.
Some folks are like that.

I noticed that a hen looks up to the sky every time
it takes a drink. It is fair to assume that she is thank-
ing God for the drink. After the prohibition amend-
ment is passed by the nation, it is fair to assume also
that men will be doing the same. If one hen decides to
tackle the water-bucket, all of the rest of the hens feel
convivial. You do not often see one hen, drinking
alone. Some folks are also like that. Hens are taken
with sudden and, to me, inexplicable attacks of panic.

38 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

For instance, waves of unrest pass thru a flock of hens.
I lay there on the ground, very quietly. No hawk was
in the sky; no hawkers on the premises. But every
now and then the hens would huddle ; a sort of tremor
would pass thru them. They would cackle and screarti
and run about and then quiet would be resumed.
What was it? Can it be true that souls of politicians
are embodied in hens by the transmigration of the
same, — the souls I mean, not the hens ?

I have a notion that there exist whole-souls and
half-portion souls and souls in side-dishes and yet
smaller — like twenty-cent ice-creams and fifteen-cent-
ers and cones — for five cents each. Hens have small
souls, I fully believe. Yet they do seem to me to have
human suggestion about them. They act a good deal
like people, but in a lesser way. For instance, I have
1 >ticed that hens strut when looked at intently — just
like a girl with new silk hose. They preen and cluck
and plume themselves in society. Cats do the same.
A cat is almost as vain as a rooster with a red comb.
There was one rooster in the yard that did not do a
thing but prance around and lift his legs high and
make a noise. He was prounder than a new Major in
his first uniform.

Hens lack will-power except in laying eggs. I know
nothing as a matter of fact about the chief function of
a hen, but in practical things such as scratching a hole
in the ground, the hen has neither will to do, nor power
to persevere. She quits and runs hence. Her cackle
is a desultory thing. It has certain musical notes in
the alto, but all of them go to show that they are mere-
ly the residue of inattention to what was once a noble
organ. Indeed the name "hen" is derived from
"canere," to sing. She was once a singer — he, a chant-
i-cleer ; notice the first syllable "chant."

The Moral of this is simple: no bird or beast or
human that runs around in circles and refuses to lay

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 39

eggs or do work or give himself over to useful employ-
ment except when eggs, et cetera, are high, can expect
anything else but deterioration ! He is bound to degen-
eracy. He should go hens.

ON "FURNACES"

HEN I get to thinking about hell philosophi-
cally, and want to feel my subject, I go down
cellar and look at the furnace. With me it
is a matter of temperament rather than tem-
perature. The furnace looks like hell — or
the way I have fancied hell might look — and
it is dark and suggestive of coal-bills. And it squats
on the floor, saturnine, mysterious.

Furnaces were invented a good many years ago, if
we may believe the Old Testament. Three men walked
thru a fiery furnace, according to Daniel, and came
out unscathed. Any one could have done that in my
furnace last winter, with the kind of coal the Fuel Ad-
ministration was doling out and the local coal-dealers
were hilariously selling at $12 a ton. The three men
were Jews — Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They
probably knew that the coal was the heatless variety,
dug especially for the year of the Great War, 1918,
Anno Domino. You could not fool one of those lads
on fuel. And the Lord was on their side and against
Nebuchadnezzar and his furnace.

There are but two seasons for most men — when the
furnace is going, and when it is not. In the latter he
is a care-free, rollicking blade. In the other he is
chained to the monster that sucks his heart-blood and
keeps him in nights and Sundays. No man running a
furnace is a free man. If the Kaiser would promise
his soldiers that if they won the war he would see that

40 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

all of their furnaces were run free for them forever
after — why there would be nothing to it. Those Huns
would leap to it and do or die. Not even a German
likes to run a furnace. As it now is most of them
rather be licked than go back and run a German fur-
nace.

This is the season of the year when manufacturers
advertise furnaces. Every kind that is advertised cuts
the coal bill of any other kind of a furnace square in
two. Take a pencil and paper and you can figure how,
by buying two furnaces, you can get along without any
coal, and by buying four furnaces, you can lay up
enough coal to be able to start in the coal-business and
thus get to be a millionaire in a single winter. Then
there is a sort of furnace, in the advertisements, that
runs itself. It requires no shaking down ; it starts itself
in the morning with a push-button and a thermo-
stat. You can even start it by having an alarm clock
by the head of your bed which will not only start the
furnace but will also pull the bed clothes up around you
a little closer and give the baby his bottle at the same
time. One of these super-furnaces will also carry out
the ashes ; shovel off the walks ; take in the milk ; boil
your morning egg ; and talk back to your wife. It will
not pay for the coal ; but as it does not burn any coal,
you do well not to ask the impossible of a mere mechan-
ical contrivance. There are limits even to the capacity
of a super-furnace. If it will saw and split the wood;
lug it in ; build its own fires ; heat the wash-water ; keep
the house at seventy, or rather sixty-eight (conf. Local
Fuel Adm'r) and guarantee that the cook won't quit,
it is doing enough.

But most of us have to get along with the old-fash-
ioned, common variety of furnace. It enjoys work
best in warm weather. Give it a nice, warm, summer-
like winter day and it will produce heat enough to
warm the State Capitol at Augusta. You can't keep it

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 41

back. If you decline to give it coal, it goes out and
gets it. But on a heavy day of cold, it will not work
unless on time-and-a-half and double-time holidays and
it could not heat a spare bunk in a ten-cent lodging
house.

To return to my first thought — if any. It seems
odd that from the beginning of time, they have de-
picted the future state of punishment as a spell of
eternal tending of furnaces. Jonathan Edwards, who
had some gifts, as a pessimist, regarding the comforts
of hell, generally suggested that it would be a long job
of shoveling.

There is only one thing, however, that the eminent
colonial preacher left out. He might have added "and
you will have to pay for your own coal." If he had
said that — well, there would have been no original sin
in the U. S. A.

ON "HATS, HERE AND THERE"

FTER Adam and Eve were driven out of the
Garden of Eden and Eve took to dressmak-
ing, nothing much was doing in millinery un-
til the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. The
first hatters and milliners set up in Sodom
and then moved over the bridge to Gomorrah.
Now, everyone wears a hat. And Lot's wife is as
fresh as ever in a new bunnit.

One time I sold a hat to an old-clothes man at col-
lege. After I came up here to work, I saw the hat in
a second-hand store run by S. Record. It was mixed
up with a lot of old army pistols. I bought it and have
it now. It is of no value except to inspire memories.
We used to have hats that lasted, when we were boys.
A boy's hat went thru the whole family, just as dad's

42 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

trousers did, and at the close they seemed as strong,
if not stronger, than when they started out on their
career of usefulness. You have seen them — old-timer
— ^those boyhood hats that hung in the schoolhouse
entry — changed by the sun, warped by the rains, but
undying yet. They might fade but they never sur-
rendered. Mixed in with the girl's sunbonnet — old-
fashioned Shaker bonnets — they looked like yaller dogs
troubled with the mange. Now and then they became
elongated to peaks. Set one of these jauntily on the
head of a red-headed, freckled-faced boy, wearing a
gingham shirt and huckabuck trousers, and you had a
thing of beauty as unlike the modem boy as a Packard
automobile differs from father's carryall.

The old-fashioned boy never had a complete outfit.
If he got a suit of clothes from the village tailoress, he
did not get a pair of new boots. Or if, by dire neces-
sity, he got a pair of new boots he did not get a new
hat. Never! He simply wore the new fixings and
punctuated the awful condition of his hat. I have
gone bareheaded to church many a time, flourishing
my old hat with an aspect of hilarity that I did not feel,
and banging the fence-posts with it, trying to wear it
out. But it could not be done. Those old-time lids
were "genuwine." Even an old-fashioned straw hat
could be run thru the mowing machine and chewed up
by the bull and yet be "good enough to wear again."

No person should buy a hat for another person.
And yet no woman should buy her own hat. This
seems foolish and contradictory — yet it works out that
way. In my opinion, a War Board should be appointed
to buy women's hats. No woman should invest in a
hat until it has been passed on by the Shipping Board,
the Fuel Administrator and the Army and Navy;
looked over by Josephus Daniels and tried on by Wood-
row Wilson. What we want in women's hats is to
make the hat fit the woman. Up to now women have

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 43

been buying hats because they were inherently "love-
ly," "darling," "wonderful," as they sit there on a pole,
in the milliner's window. The woman never asks "Does
the hat look well on me?" All she asks for is thirty
dollars' worth of raiment, more gorgeous than the
lilies, more brilliant than the sunset. Personally, she
may have a face like a fried egg — ^the hat's the thing.
Homely women ought to buy plain hats — and vice
versa. Mother used to buy hats — ^hold there! — did
she? No! She used to make them. Poor dear! I
can see her now, digging each spring among her treas-
ures for a spring bunnit. One plume a year and lo ! a
new bonnet for the dear old head. And bonnet strings
tied under the chin. Guess they never will get a style
to beat it. When she went to church of a Sunday in
May, in her new creation, and Dad had dug out his old
tall hat and brushed it with a currycomb and donned
his tricot coat and broadcloth vest and pants and put
on a blue necktie — well, well, well. Oh Boy, and then
plus.

The general conception of Heaven seems to be that
we do not wear hats there. They will interfere with
flying and the action of the wings. I shall be sorry.
I don't know what I shall do to take up my spare time —
no hunting for my hat. But, you see, it would be im-
possible to have hats in heaven — ^much as the ladies
will miss them. Fancy Joan of Arc in a sailor hat ; or
Socrates in a plug hat; or George Washington in a
plaid cap. So, we must do all our "hatting" here.
For the elect, no lids in the next world ; and a cast-iron
one for the Kaiser with light asbestos for Sundays.
So let us indulge ourselves here ! Off with the lid !

ON "PLAYING THE GAME"

OME on — ^be a good scout! It costs nothing;
pays dividends; eases up on the friction of
the world and fits you for heaven.

It is hard for some people to be pleasant.
We have to pity them. They may have rea-
sons for not being gentle and kindly and
happy. They may have corns on their livers ; or warts
on their spleens. Perhaps they make more bile than
their circulatory organs can deliver. But there never
was one of them who could not, if he really wanted to
do so, become a tractable and decent companion.
Many of them succeed in going along in an apparently
joyous way, when they feel otherwise.

All honor to these heroes. It is the chap who has
been soured by some personal calamity and who goes
into a hermitage of the soul and senses; who crawls
into an iron-clad tank and spouts flame at all creation,
that we feel ought to be reached. He ought to know
that nothing can have happened to him that has not
happened to others in former days. Listen to what
Euripides wrote, over two thousand years ago:
"Naught else to us hath yet been dealt, but that which
daily, men have felt." Suppose that a great calamity
befell you. It is not necessary to be specific, in illus-
tration, but let us say that it is something real, vital !
Consider! It is just what has happened to others.
Be a good scout ! Take it like a man !

Here is a true story about a remarkable man who
died recently in Auburn. He was a master-mind. His
position in our social, intellectual and political order
was high. He had the keenest, straightest-thinking
brain that could possibly be given to man. He was at
the apex of, a lifetime of hard work — ^just when he had
a right to enjoy the rewards of patient study, the
accumulated lore of law and practice. He went to a

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 45

specialist one day to find out what was the cause of his
illness. He received his death-warrant. He had a
hopeless case of cancer. He might live a year, or two.
He came home and went to work.

And then ensued a peculiar case of loving fortitude.
He kept his hopelessness from his family. Never a
word said he. A smile on his face, a laugh on his lips,
a patient going about his work as long as strength
lasted and then a final illness in which he professed a
persistent hope of recovery to the end. And that is
not all. Certain members of his family knew the sit-
uation also. Nothing was said about it. The wife
was the only one who was unaware of the fatality of
the disease and two years of such comfort as hope
could give her were the reward of this family — each
keeping the supposed secret from the other — ^the son
believing that the father was uninformed of the nature
of the disease — the father believing that the son did
not know. And so this group, maintaining an outward
cheer, went on to the end. You cannot beat it in all of
the stories of heroism.

So I say to others — whatever happens, you can
always play the game to the end. You can always be
considerate. Nothing has happened to you that hath
not happened to others. Play the game! Tune up!
Be a "good scout."

ON "THE POET AND THE APPLE BLOSSOM"

ATURE is rather inclined to boast a bit in the
spring — don't you think so? Some of the
ugliest things delight in dressing up so that
they are infinitely beautiful, as if to say:
"We could be beautiful always, but we prefer
to be useful." Beauty is religion in nature.
About every animate thing in the vegetable world goes
to church at least once in a year — a sort of Easter con-
fessional.

I am thinking now about something that I consider
the loveliest thing in the world. Fifty weeks in the
year it is scraggy, rough, sprawling, gnarled and alto-
gether homely. Two weeks or so in the year it gives
itself up to its raiment. And then how it is adorned!
It may appear, in a single night, to have put on its new
attire, and, lo! it is one with the mother-of-pearl, the
diamond glints, and the fluff of the angels' wings that
we esteem may be the popular tints in Heaven.

We are even now upon the eve of the translation!
It will be here soon — ^the most wonderful apocalypse.
I am looking for it every morning from my window.
It is the blossoming of the apple-orchards.

You, perhaps, take it for granted. All right. Go
your way, stranger. But you really have no right to
expect quite so much. For, where is there anything
else in the world so beautiful as a Maine apple-orchard
in full bloom ? People go across the sea to be in Japan
in cherry-blossom time. It is not so lovely as apple-
blossom time in Maine. Wonder is that there are not
already processions of poets on their way here to
Maine, singing odes as they march and waving banners
with iambics on them.

A proper poet — literary poet, I mean — one who
really prints his verses, could get a lot out of a week
under an apple tree. Of course the every day poet —

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 47

the one who only thinks his poetry and does not bother
to write it, a much happier way for everybody — does
get his dividends any way out of the apple-blossom
time. He is usually very practical and owns apple-
trees. He likes to see how they bud and how they
blossom and how they fruit in the fall. But the Poet
— purely literary — tho he has written of apple-blos-
soms, maybe has never seen one. Come over to Maine
and lie down a week and look up thru the heaven-
starred branches of the apple tree and see God. Come
over to Maine and get a sniff or two of the perfume
from a Maine hillside. Come over to Maine and learn
the ways of the apple-blossom and the bee and the
trout.

Did you know, for instance, O Poet ! that it is not
of much use to try to lure the big fish from the trout-
inhabited lakes of Maine until the apple-blossom is on
the tree. I knew a Maine fisherman, one of the best,
who never wet a line until the trees in his own orchard
were bouquets of glory. The fish know — you see!
The fish have a habit of reviving from their winter
sleep along about the time that the apple-tree puts
forth her color. Nothing strange about it. Facts are,
as a rule, the strangest things we know. Come on,
then. Poet, and fish and think and think and fish and
smell the sweets of heavenly things and see the rai-
ment of the Lord cast down on the apple tree for an
airing once a year. The Cherubims are wearing about
all the old colors, as usual.

Old chaps can come back and be sentimental, in
apple-blossom time. Perhaps, if they were born in
Maine, they have certain memories about this time.
An evening lamp, a low window, a woman sitting mend-
ing by the table, brothers and sisters studying lessons,
in short the old, old home and the faint odor of apple-
blossoms coming up out of the orchard. Every time
you have smelled it since then — these fifty years, you

48 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

see the mother by the lamp, you think of old dad. You
think of the lilacs, the old red lilacs up against the par-
lor window, and their perfume. I don't know where
else over the old farm your memories may wander. I
surely am not going to get sentimental over it.

But — hear me — there is a lot to this "apple-blos-
som" stuff.

ON "SHADOW AND SUBSTANCE"

N ^SOP'S Fables you will find the following:
A Traveler hired an Ass to convey him to a
distant place. The day being intensely hot
and the sun shining in its strength, the trav-
eler stopped to rest and sought shelter from
the heat under the Shadow of the Ass. As
this afforded protection for but one and as the traveler
and the owner of the Ass both claimed it, a violent dis-
pute arose between them as to which had the right to
it. The owner maintained that he had let the Ass only
and not the Shadow. The traveler maintained that
with the hire of the Ass, he had hired his Shadow also.
The quarrel proceeded from words to blows and while
the men fought, the Ass galloped off.

Moral: In quarreling about the Shadow, we often
lose the Substance.

Of course! If you never quarreled, the Fable has
no significance to you, but if you have ever had a fight
with another man or woman about something that did
not amount to a row of pins, iS^sop says something.

I saw a man and a woman a few months ago in the
divorce court. There did not seem to be much of any-
thing the trouble — too much "personality" — some call
it "temperament;" better called "egoism." Also thru
the crack of the door, the court could see the sharp

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 49

nose of a sniffy mother-in-law. There are such crit-
ters— alas! Well — they were nice looking young peo-
ple ; too sensible to be fighting over his right to sit up
nights and read when she thought he ought to be kiss-
ing her under the left ear. Too sensible to be fighting
over her liking to go out and see the movies now and
then, when he thought she had not a ghost of a right
to spend money for such purposes. I could see the
Ass's ears, crowned with orange blossoms, and sur-
rounded by dancing cupids — if only the two little fools
would kiss and make up and recall the fact that he is
an entity apart from her, and she is an entity apart
from him, and that each has certain rights to pursuit
of harmless happiness. But alas! The Uncrowned
Ass! It galloped away via the divorce court, taking
with it what substance? — Two broken lives; the hope
and happiness of two little children whom they had
brought into the world and who have a right to the love
of a mother and the counsel of a father.

You may recall instances where partners in busi-
ness have not been able to agree over which was the
boss. The business was prosperous and profitable.
They liquidated. There was a case once in Lewiston in
a most profitable shoe-factory. It was their affair —
not mine, but the other day one of them said to me,
"If we hadn't differed over nothing we would have been
taking those profits up to this hour, for we were a
successful team."

My friend, do not quarrel unless the fight is worth
while. Fight for Right. Fight for Substance. Fight
for the things that endure — chief of which is Justice
to all men and women and children. But do not fight
for the Shadow of a substance and see the substance
gallop off while you are gouging and biting and rolling
in the dirt.

ON "FEATHER BEDS, ET CETERA"

UR Maine News Editor came over to my desk
the other day and said: "They are having a
law-suit up in northern Maine, over the own-
ership of a feather-bed. Why don't you con-
verse with your readers on the feather-bed?"
And she said it just as tho it were some-
thing soft.

Until this happened, we had supposed that the
feather-bed was extinct, like the dodo and the great
auk. We did not know that one was left in captivity.
They used to be numerous and considered valuable. A
newly-married couple could set up housekeeping with
a feather-bed and a watch-dog. Do you recall the ap-
pearance of Aylward the Archer in Conan Doyle's
"White Company" coming back from Flanders and the
wars, bearing his richest spoil, a feather-bed, two
varlets carrying it ?

I have slept on a feather-bed in summer in the hot
attic of a story and a half country farm-house, after a
day when the thermometer had been 95 degrees in the
shade, one window in the room and that about as big
as the seat of my pants, crickets chirruping "more
heat" outside, corn growing so that you could hear it,
distant bull-frogs droning, and myself snugly and cosi-
ly ensconsed in a feather-bed that kept crawling up
around me with its hot hands and enveloping my sys-
tem. I believe that after a youth devoted to such hot
times in the old town, a man is proof against dissipa-
tion in this world and the next. Sure thing, he knows
what heat is !

Under the feather-bed was a bed made of corn-
husks. Everything right off the farm, as it were!
And under that was a corded bed. Did you ever cord
up a bed ? There is some fun you have missed ! You
must be a man or else a farmerette, to do it modestly.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 51

The cord runs from side to side and then longitudinally,
making neat little squares, thru which you penetrate
your legs and tighten the cord. Then you have a mal-
let and a wooden bed-pin which latter you drive into
the holes in the side of the bed to hold the bed-cord
preparatory to tightening it. Then the bed falls down.
It always did and it always would. The proper way to
tighten a bed was to walk down in the cross-cords and
pull up the longitudinal cords. And if you were smart
and strong, you could lift yourself by your own bed-
cord. If there was anything I would rather not do as a
boy, it was to cord up a bed. There was only one thing
that had it tied to the spare tire and that was changing
the tick on a feather-bed.

That was annual. You could tell when the neigh-
bors were doing it in the spring by the flight of feath-
ers. They would settle miles away and, as they came
floating down, mother would pick one up and say, "That
is Mrs. Tyler's feathers. She is changing ticks. Son-
ny, you get ready for tomorrow." I know of nothing
more depressing than to shoulder a feather-bed — the
goose-feathers or the hen's feathers of which has seg-
regated in the southwest corner of the tick — bring it
down stairs out of doors into the warm and unsanitary
region back of the barn and proceed to change ticks by
removing the feathers from one to another, meantime
endeavoring to reanimate the feathers. You can do
about so much in this world. But you can't put much
pep into a discouraged hen's feather. I found that out
when young and then and there declared that whatever
business I adopted, it would not be that of feather-
encourager. On a hot day, with feathers up your nose
and tickling the back of your neck and sifting thru
your kidneys and gall-bladder, it is not half as much
fun as fishing on a good brook, under the shade of an
old elm with the bobolinks singing their roundelays to
your boyhood happiness.

52 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I have known good old couples who have slept all of
their lives together on a feather-bed, over a husk-bed,
over a corded bed. It was as unsanitary as drinking
out of a water-tumbler. But they lived to old age. I
don't know how they did it. Yes — I do. They had
boys who corded up the bed and manicured the feath-
ers. Some of the boys outlived it. They are now
sleeping on something other than feather-beds. It
only goes to show that some things may be endured if
you can get others to do part of the enduring. And
that's the philosophy of it.

ON "STICKING TO THE JOB"

WENT fishing last week at Kineo. It was a
day of howling winds and storm-driven sky
— ^just the kind of a day to seek the lee of the
coast, to fish along the shore under the toss-
ing, wind-lashed birches and to dine on shore
by the open fire with the guides deftly laying
the table and pouring the nectar that IS coffee.

I had a Stanley spinner on my line. The guide
favored a Cornwall spinner and all day long he be-
moaned the fate that left us with no spinner to suit his
fancy. "If I only had a Cornwall spinner." And yet
I was catching fish. Furthermore, this guide was
wishing we were in another place. "We ought to have
gone down on the Toe of the Boot.' I never did like
these Socatean waters." And so it was, all day long —
the distant pastures always fairer to him.

After I got home and began to think about the
guide and began to summon my proverbial philosophy
to fit the case, I ran across this story in a little booklet
that came to my desk called "McK, and R., Drug
Topics," which is written by a very clever person. It
was under the caption, '"Oh, if I Only had the Other
Fellow's Job," and was devoted to this idea — "Why

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 53

shift? Before you change be sure you are doing all
you can where you are."

This was the story:

Grover Cleveland, when he was President, went out
fishing one day with Joe Jefferson and William H.
Crane, the actors.

After they had been out less than half an hour,
without getting a nibble on their lines, Jefferson began
to get restless and fidget about the boat.

"Let's move over there," said the famous imperson-
ator of "Rip Van Winkle," "I'm sure we'll find it better.
There's nothing here."

Cleveland said nothing — ^just went on fishing.

"This is wasting time," Jefferson continued in a
little while. "We've been here 45 minutes by the clock
and not one of us has had a bite. The fish must all be
over on the other side of the pond. We better move the
boat." Cleveland looked up from his line and dryly
replied :

"Joe, when I was a small boy I went fishing with my
Uncle Elihu, and I remember he told me that one
of the secrets of success in life was to stick to the place
where you'd thrown your anchor out. Too many
folks,' said Uncle Elihu, *spend all their time pulling up
their anchors and rowing around ; they don't catch the
fish.* As for me, when I start in to fish, I sit right
there and fish until either the pond runs dry or the
horn blows for supper."

Many people in all walks of life who are sure there
are no fish where they are, are aching to move and cast
anchor elsewhere — ^just the way Joe Jefferson did. He
made a million dollars out of the stage, but always was
sure there was nothing in it. He wanted to be a paint-
er. Comedians always want to be tragedians and
vice-versa. They want to move on and fish elsewhere.

Same with lots of men in trades and business.
They want the other fellow's job. The other fellow's

54

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

job ! — How about your own? — Are you making the firm
stand up on its hind legs and notice you? Are you
putting so much pep into it that it can't do without
you ? Have you sewed it up tight ? Have you cleaned
up the pool until there is nothing left in it for you?
If you have — move on; but if all you are doing is be-
moaning fairer pastures and deeper pools "over there ;"
if all you do is act surly, complain that you are misun-
derstood; dawdling around and idling on the fish-pole,
why — perhaps you better drop overboard. Nobody
will miss you. If you are going to talk like a fish and
act like a fish — ^better be a fish. The world is full of
examples of success made by sticking to the job. The
world is full of failures of men of marked intelligence
who have roamed afar looking for better fishing
"around the 'Toe of the Boot.' " If you are fishing the
pool — ^fish it out.

ON "THE BATH-TUB"

HE Bath-tub is an oval receptacle for the
human body. It is about two feet deep and
about twelve inches too short. It comes in
several varieties from the sitz to the "snitz."
The latter is a kind of bath-tub that you look
at but do not wet.
A bath-room with a bath-tub in it is a good thing
to have in the house even if you have no use for it —
because it gives you something to talk about. Some
years ago, people would speak of the bath-tub in that
casual, deprecatory way in which one nowadays speaks
of his automobile, a sort of ticket, admitting one to the
circle of the first-families. To say "I was in the bath-
tub when you rung the door-bell," was much like say-
ing, "The winter I was in the Legislater," or "the year

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 55

I was in Europe." It gave you a certain standing. It
put your unwashed friend at a disadvantage. He could
not expect to have the polish — ablutionary or other-
wise— that you have when he practiced merely sec-
tional and non-contemporaneous application of soap and
water. There was no special distinction coming to him
in society in those days, if all he could drag into the
social chat was some such remark as this: "I was
a'washing myself back of the ears when you was
a-callin' for me." But if he could mention an "alto-
gether," in a stationary bath-tub ! Oh, Boy !

Perhaps you notice that I use the words "stationary
bath-tubs." I do so with design. In olden days, one
bathed in a tub which was neither stationary nor ex-
clusive. Mother soaked the clothes in it Sundays;
banged the washboard over it on Mondays ; hulled corn
in it Tuesdays; scoured it out Wednesdays and began
to wash the boys and girls in it Thursdays, Fridays and
Saturdays. It was a blue tub painted white inside.
After it had seen use, it frequently developed splinters.
I mention the fact because I remember it. I have some
of them now, in my system, I think. We usually
bathed in the kitchen; but often in the barn, or the
pantry, or the parlor, or the dining room. One day in
March it happened in the dining room. Mother was
bending over me with a scrubbing-brush and a yellow
pitcher full of soft soap and I was sitting on a splinter,
when the schoolmarm butted in and asked mother why
I was absent from school the previous day. It was
referred to me and I had no ready answer. If you ever
got a moist-licking in a wash-tub in the month of
March, for playing hookey, you will know why I yet
remember the incident. It is my recollection that
in those days most of the "altogether" bathing was
done in the spring and summer. It was difficult to bust
the ice in the wash-tub after Thanksgiving day. So
we generally confined our ablutions to a reasonable

56 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

reach below the collar button and waited patiently for
spring.

Adam Thompson of Cincinnati, Ohio, was the first
man in America to put a bath-tub with running water
into his house, and practice winter-bathing. This was
Dec. 20th, 1842. It aroused a nation to controversy.
The medical profession, with its usual foresight, de-
clared it a dangerous thing and bound to increase the
prevalence of zymotic diseases. Society frowned on
mid-winter bathing. Finally, Millard Fillmore, Presi-
dent of the United States, put a bath-tub into the
White House, in 1851. That settled it. Society took
it up and began to brag about bathing on other days
than Saturday night. A New York hotel put in a
bath-tub. People went far to see it. Royal Dukes
were taken around to see it on their visits to America.
It was not uncommon for some untitled person to be
using it and compelled to dive under water while it was
inspected by a Duke or maybe a common Earl.

There is much more I could say. But I refrain.
While the Huns bathe in blood let us bathe in water.
Bath-tubs are but the beginning. For the day will
come when sumptuous public baths will be maintained
by every town of 20,000 inhabitants and when it will
be fit cause for indictment for neglect or refusal by
any municipality to comply with this law. Then, per-
haps, we shall be clean — and Godly.

ON "CLOTHES"

E ALL know something about clothes. Every-
one has used them — except Adam and Eve —
and even they had a definite, if limited
knowledge of their uses.

When I was a boy, we had no children's
stores. Your mother — old chap — used to cut
your hair and your clothes. You can see some of
mother's hair-cuts of sixty years ago — eight inches of
hair chopped off at the coat collar and a lambrequin
underneath. You used to whisper across the aisle in
school, "Mother cut yer hair 'round a sugar-bowl!"
And then someone got licked at recess.

Same way with clothes. Mother used to lay you
down on the kitchen floor and mark a pattern of you
out in chalk. And then she used to take a suit of
clothes formerly belonging to some remote adult ances-
tor and of entirely different architecture and carve you
a suit. We used to wear pants that had been what we
called "razeed." They were shortened in the legs and
reduced in the dome. As a result the pockets came
down so far that a small boy had to double up to find
his jackknife. I can recall the appearance of a boy in
a pair of his grandfather's razeed trousers, with barn-
door front. That was going some.

One good woman in my neighborhood used to put
gores in her boy's pants fore and aft. Thus she got
double wear, for he had to turn and turn about in
those pants every other day so that they would last
longer. Seats of pants were the most vulnerable por-
tions in boyhood ! I had a pair of pants once made out
of mother's beaver cloak. They were nice pants but
not very natty. The goods was very durable — ^being
about half an inch thick. The finest thing about those
pants was that they would stand alone. I could take
them off — the cute little things — at night and they

58 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

would have done nicely for a double-barreled umbrella
rack. When I first wore them to school the teacher
kept telling me to please sit down in my seat and not
half down. "Please marm," says I, "I can't sit down
no farther, my pants is too stiff and thick."

I heard Simeon Ford speak once about clothes and
he said that he once went to school in a suit carved out
of his uncle's army overcoat. He entered the school
with misgivings and was received with enthusiasm
Remarks were made calculated to wound his feelings.
In order to provide for his confirmed habit of growing,
tucks had been let into the pants front and back, so
that the effect was more striking and bizarre than
fashionable. It was common talk at that time that
army cloth was all shoddy and no good to wear. The
gossip was unfounded. The clothes wore like iron.
He spent hours sliding down cellar doors and over the
rocks but the hateful army overcoat would not wear
out. Finally he got mad and outgrew it and it was
passed on to some younger relative and probably some
poor wretch is wearing it yet.

Of course, if we men could have our way, we would
all be wearing kilts. They seem thrifty and cheap.
I can think of some men in Lewiston and Auburn that
I would as soon see in kilts as to wear 'em myself. If
we could save enough on kilts we might buy our wives
at least two hats a year more — and really all a woman
needs, nowadays, is a pair of high boots, a few other
things and a hat a week. But I am glad that it is so.
Fashion is a fine thing. It makes markets and it
troubles tight- wads. There never was an age meaner
than that age when the old gent made your boots,
mother made your pants and big sister chopped off
your loose hair. It was mortifying. It spoiled a boy's
pride. It kept his mind off his lessons. It was need-
less and ill-advised economy, in restraint of trade. You
can't get business, unless you DO business !

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 59

It is just the same in life. It is mighty hard for a
man to show up well in a formal assembly when he has
a patch on the seat of his pants of a different color of
goods. He can't make his way very well in society
without a dress-suit. Once all we needed was a paper
collar and a linen suit. Today good clothes, neat
clothes, are absolutely essential. It was a shame — ^the
way they used to dress girls and boys. Just as much
a shame as it is to over-dress them, as some people are
doing today.

ON "HELL"

0, DEAR friend ! This is not to be a discussion
of "hell" the expletive but of "hell" as a loca-
tion.

There is a popular revival of Hell as a fu-
ture abode for Germans, There seems to be
no other punishment to fit the crime. If
there is not a Hell for Huns, what sort of a bogie man
is going to get them. Yes ! WE have plenty of room
in our philosophy and religion, for some kind of a
super-steam and poison gas hell especially built for the
Pagan tribe of women-killers and murderers of the sick
and helpless, that inhabit and fester the earth around
Potsdam.

There is no history of Hell at hand. Its beginnings
go back to the dawn of the human race. It seems to
have been preached very strongly very early in the
ministry. St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a rather dog-
matic chap, about seven hundred years ago, informed a
world that doubtless needed the information, that the
redeemed in Heaven could look out and see the damned
in Hell and have no sort of pity for their tortures.
Somehow, today, there is a sort of comfort in that doc-
trine as applied to the folks that crucify captives and

60 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

shoot nurses. The early fathers of the church used
these things on wicked people and perhaps did a lot of
restraining work with them.

Now a few facts about hell. St. Bonaventura says
that any human conception of hell is heaven compared
to what hell really is. Now there is some power in old
St. Bonaventura, is there not? He says that the
damned are packed in at the rate of 100,000,000 to a
German square mile. You notice that he says "Ger-
man." Jerome and Tertullian say that the popular
bath in hell is probably hot sulphur and burning pitch.
Gulielanus Pariensis, an old ecclesiastic, says that ac-
cording to his computation, there are 44,435,556 devils
alone, but other authorities say that there must be a
great many more to do the work of efficient and com-
plete torture required. Jonathan Edwards said in
1741 at Enfield, Ct., that the bigger part of men
that had died hitherto had undoubtedly gone to hell.
Some idea of the population of hell may be gained by
the statement of Dr. Louis de Moulin of the University
of Oxford in 1680 that the population of hell increased
at the rate of 15,768,000 a year.

There is some question about the location of hell.
It has been located at the poles, at the antipodes, in the
centre of the earth, in Mars, in the moon, in the sea.
Tertullian and Dante placed it in the centre of the
earth. This seems to be the popular location. Every
time we see a volcano we think of hell and it makes us
sad to think how its choice society up to the year 1914
has been partially and is to be completely ruined by an
influx of undesirable, low-lived Huns. The absence of
air, and the small size of the earth's centre indicating
a scarcity of room, have driven the theologians to look
to the sun as a fit place. So there we leave it. As to
the shape of, hell — it is universally agreed to be cir-
cular. No corners for escape. It is no place for
plumbers, for there is no running water. Perhaps,

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 61

however, they might be useful in looking after the
liquid fire. Possibly this vigorous element may sup-
plant cold water in the domestic appliances of the
Gehenna bath rooms, etc.

These are all of the actual facts I have been able
to gather about Hell. It has undoubtedly outgrown
the centre of the earth; is located in the sun; has a
large population and is banking the fires and cleaning
house for more. Personally, I do think that there never
was a time when some sort of a reasonable sort of
hell ought to be preached more resolutely than now. I
don't mean to be cruel about it, but there is altogether
too little said about the next world to keep some Prot-
estants straight. They need a word of warning now
and then about Hell. Make it to suit yourself — ^the
size, location, temperature, sanitation, etc., but for the
sake of a heaven here and hereafter, don't forget to
preach that the wages of sin are death and that as ye
sow, so shall ye reap.

ON "GETTING THERE BY PERSEVERING"

E HAD word in this office the other day that
Ralph Skinner who was once a reporter in
this office — and that not so long ago — is now
a Captain in the regular army of the U. S.,
stationed near San Francisco.

Here is an example of what perseverance
and pluck will do. Never was there a boy who seemed
to have a harder prospect before him than Skinner had
three years ago. He came here to work in this office
when he hadn't a chance in the world. He had a cer-
tain facility in writing but no capacity to speak of as a
reporter. He tried and tried, and never gave up, but
the way was long and weary. Once he quit and went

62 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

to farming. He made a complete and utter failure and
celebrated it in a story of flashes of facetious nature —
one of those stories that could not be printed because it
was too prolix but which showed ability of high order.

To help out his work in the newspaper and heighten
his usefulness he joined the National Guard. His sole
purpose was to make good on the newspaper and to get
at the sources of news of that class. He became a very
good soldier. His fundamental characteristic was con-
science. He was absolutely honest to himself and all
of the world. Of all men, he was surpassed by none
in his sense of absolute devotion to duty and to right.
He was the sweetest, fairest, best of young men. But
he was not built for advances in newspaper work. No
one knew it better than he.

Little by little he began to get ahead in the military
way. Physically he developed. Mentally he grew.
Finally I came across him one day studying French. I
said nothing. Next I found him at work on plane Trig-
onometry and working at logarithms. I asked him
what was the idea. He said that he was going in for
examination for Second Lieutenant in the Regular
Army of the U. S., — a life profession if he landed it.

How the lad studied! He was married by this
time, and happily. This was a spur to him. He took
an examination and failed. But he failed so that some-
one was impressed by the material — the man in him.
He was asked to come over and try it again. The of-
ficers liked the Stuff in him. He tried and failed on a
few studies. I don't know how many times he tried be-
fore he conquered, step by step, the weary way of the
night and day toil. But he got there !

When he went to the examinations, he expected to
land in the Coast Artillery. An oificer who evidently
liked him said, "Can you ride a horse?" "Sure," said
Skinner. They led up the horse and Skinner crossed a
leg over him. The horse ran away with him and he
came near never getting back.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 63

"There's no question that you CAN ride," said the
officer smilingly, "but it is plain that you don't know
how, at present," Skinner learned. He became Sec-
ond Lieutenant in the Cavalry ; First Lieutenant in the
Cavalry. Now he is a Captain.

A handsome chap ! A fine fellow. His only trouble
has been his habit of introspection — looking at a sub-
ject from too many angles to find out if he could do it
according to conscience. He has now found out, I am
told, how to decide quickly, intuitively, what is right
and to do it.

If there is a lesson in Capt. Skinner's life — the
young man may find it. He will like it full as well as
he will if I try to point it out for him. But it is there.
It is a lesson of patience, courage, manliness, conscience
and fearlessnes.

ON "MAKING THE BEST OF THINGS"

MAN named William McQuigg fell down the
shaft of a mine and lay there three days.
He was taken up alive but paralyzed from the
waist down. He was taken to a hospital for
incurables in Chicago and was there two
years. He could use his head, hands and
arms — especially his head.

In some way, he realized $300 out of his past be-
longings, as a miner, and when this had come to hand,
he informed the hospital officials that he was about to
leave them. No man with his brains was incurable, in
the full sense of the term. He accordingly devised a
small bed with wheels on which he could lie and which
he could propel with his arms and hands. He was
taken from the hospital .and set upon the streets to be-
gin again the life of an active man.

64 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

His first business move was to lease a store and
start a small printing and stationery business. He did
well. He attracted attention by his cheerfulness and
optimism. They were his best stock-in-trade as they
are any man's best business assets. He became fore-
handed. He owned his automobile which was made
especially for his needs, with a bed in it. In this he
went everywhere, doing business and enjoying all that
nature and the sight of man can combine to offer.

He is now in Washington, D. C. — so Mr. F. H.
Briggs of that city tells me — as an expert on matters
pertaining to cripples.

We have an example of the highest possible inspira-
tion right here in Lewiston, of a young man who, in the
fullness of his strength as a boy, was accidentally shot,
damaging the spinal cord. He is doing business,
cheerfully, with never a complaint, driving his own au-
tomobile under physical conditions that in a less de-
termined character might keep him bed-ridden, away
from all that a man holds dear. One never sees him
but with a prayer for his renewing strength and a
blessing on him for his example.

It's a big thing to make the best of things. Half a
man is better than no man at all. A man's
brain is ninety per cent, of his anatomy. He can get
along without legs and arms and other minor organs if
he has his dynamic brain going. It is hard to be crip-
pled— but there are worse things. And the cheerful
man, who shows to the world the aspect of a fellow-
worker under adverse circumstances, is positively an
inspiration. He shames the idler. It puts the rich
man's dissipated and non-productive life into the dis-
card of vain and wicked things when one contemplates
this patient soldier of industry, toiling away, like Will-
iam McQuigg, happy to do his share.

We are soon going to see many a man, badly dam-
aged from the war. They will be coming home blind-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 65

ed, without feet and hands, paralyzed and helpless. But
not one of them as true soldiers will fail to make the
best of it — to do something to keep a place in the ranks
of workers.

But how about the rest of us ? Are our belly-aches
and our indispositions and our nervous prosperities,
and our follies and our foibles to continue to make ex-
cuses for laziness?

Wake up! There's a new day abroad, in which
every man shall work and work all over. And if he is
short an arm or a leg or toe, what is left will wiggle on
and there will be no such name as "crippled" or incur-
able.

Wake ! for the day calleth !

ON "THE OTHER NAME FOR SUCCESS'

UDGE WING of Auburn was talking the other
day about his beginning in law. He was
admitted to the bar when he had been only
two times in a supreme judicial court room,
both times as a spectator. But he had long
before decided to be a lawyer and had early
been impressed with the dignity of the calling.

He thought out his career, while he was working on
the farm and while he was teaching school. The other
day he was given an unusual honor — unique we think
in the record of the bar, hereabout — a gathering of his
appreciative fellow-attorneys at a dinner to celebrate
the fiftieth anniversary of the admission of that seri-
ous-minded boy to the practice of law.

You would hunt far to find a more interesting ex-
ample of what we call "thinking in terms of success"
than the life of this eminent Maine attorney. He never
quit doing just that. Everything he ever under-

66 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

took, he carried thru, if it was possible for any man to
carry it thru. Some people have not thoroly liked
Judge Wing because of his "winning ways," but most
of them have come to learn that if he was a good fight-
er, he was a good forgetter and good forgiver. He
won because he thought of everything in terms of win-
ning. He never looked at anything in terms of pos-
sible failure. That's why he is today, young, well-
groomed, active, alive to public affairs. He never
looked at life as anything but a success.

The old philosophers all taught this very thing,
"think success." Rousseau said it, Emerson preached
it. Prentice Mulford reiterated it. We don't just
know why it works out as it does. There is no special
philosophy about it but it is surely one of those things
that just works — that's all. You take a man like
Judge Wing — all energy, all determination, all capacity
and all brains and have him think success and — the
next moment he is acting on the assumption and he
gets there.

No man is a success, however, solely on the side of
material things. I doubt if any man knows this bet-
ter than the man of whom I am writing. He has been
in a lot of fights. He has rubbed a lot of persons the
wrong way. He has been cordially hated. But he has
been just as fondly loved by those who knew him.
Fact is, he does many things by impulse and he hits
hard, but when the battle is over he has the same sensi-
tive and kindly aspect to fellow-man, the same willing-
ness to take over the battles of the man who had been
fighting him, in the first place. I know about this per-
sonally. He has done a world of good by stealth.

He's a rugged old Roman — as young as ever. He
seemed to practice law easily; but it was because he
knew how. He knew the law and he knew the routine
and he "practiced." Lots of young lawyers do not
"practice." You will have to go far in New England to

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 67

find the other man, who has been more days in the
court-room. He got his experience in work.

Perhaps this is the other reason why "thinking suc-
cess" spells "success." It is because its other name is
"hard-work."

ON "THE VOICE OF THE FROG"

AM straining my ear to hear the first croak of
the frog. Somehow, it rests me from the
contemplation of this war, to think of some-
thing sempiternal, like spring and signs of
spring. The more you think of God and His
works and the less you worry over German
hellishness the better, I think. Think more, therefore,
of spring, frogs and tortoises.

I don't know much of Nature except in the senti-
mental way. I did not know — until I looked it up —
that the wood-tortoise is the Emys insculpta. I have
heard him a little farther south in New England, after
the mud of the freshets has dried on the fallen leaf in
the swamp, as he moves, rustling in the leaves or
tumbling over the bank. I don't know which birds
come first, but some day I see a bird that I recognize
as a fat rascal of a robin and I know him because my
mother used to say "O, see the robin redbreast," and I
said that same to my children. All the children that
came to my house were as mine. I don't know which
trees come into leaf first. I only know that there is a
breath of something new and vital in the air, like a
presage of God on earth and then there is glory in the
filtered light thru foliage. All leaves are alike to me.

But the frog is different. Every time I hear him
first, I feel youth stir my blood in remembrance and
visions of old places and old faces return to me. I see

68 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the old house and the old hill and the old frog-pond and
the old bonfires blazing on the hill and the old row of
bowls where we played duck and drake. I was pleased
to know this day that someone else liked the frog in
something the same way.

That other one was Thoreau. Frogs held his con-
trite admiration. "The same starry geometry looks
down on their active and their torpid state," says he.
"The little peeping hyla winds his shrill mellow min-
iature flageolet in the warm, overflowed pools and sug-
gests to him this stupendous image. 'It was like the
light, reflected from the mountain ridges within the
shaded portions of the moon, forerunner and herald of
the spring.' " Thoreau made a regular business, study-
ing the frogs — waded for them with freezing calves, in
the early freshet, caught them and carried them home
to hear their sage songs. "I paddle up the river to see
the moonlight and hear the bull-frog," says he. About
May 22, he hears the willowy music of the frog, and
notices the pads on the river with often a scalloped
edge like those tin platters on which the country peo-
ple sometimes bake turnovers. He says of the wood-
frog, Rana sylvatica, "It had four or five dusky bars
which matched exactly when the legs were folded,
showing that the painter applied his brush to the ani-
mal when it was in that position." The leopard-frog,
the marsh-frog, the bull-frog and best of all earthly
singers, the toad he never could do enough for. It
was, he says, a great discovery, when first he found that
the ineffable trilling concerto of early summer after
sunset was arranged by the toads — when the earth
seemed fairly to stream with the sound. He thought
that the yellow, swelling throat of the bull-frog came
with the water-lilies.

Is it not some satisfaction to think that toads and
frogs will go on and on and on, singing — after the
Hohenzollerns and such small fry are dead and gone?

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 69

Is it not some comfort that flowers may spring up
again in No Man's Land? Is it not pleasant to think
that tho Rheims is gone — ^the elm tree can fling aloft a
beauty never matched by cathedral spire ?

Be of courage ! Spring will yet come into the heart
of humankind !

ON "THE FAIR AVERAGE OF WICKEDNESS"

WAS OUT on the Union Pacific, one time, some-
where west of Omaha," said Charles S. Cum-
mings of Auburn, "with no berth in the sleep-
er. I happened by chance to meet a miner,
whom I had seen a few days before, and he
gave me half of his. The car was crowded;
baggage in the aisles; children crying; women tired
and fussy. My friend couldn't sleep, so he got up in
the night and went to the smoking room for a whiff.
He fell over baggage and had a hard trip.

"In the morning he said to me, 'What is your busi-
ness?' "

" 'I am a clergyman,' said I.

" 'My word,' said he, 'You must be shocked. I
swore terribly, didn't I?' "

" 'Yes,' said I, 'You did swear a lot when you fell
down, but I prayed a lot while you swore, and thus kept
up a fair average for both of us.' "

I think that a good many people forget that the
world runs by averages. It is hard to get one hundred
per cent efficiency either in praying or swearing. It
is fair to suppose that swearing has its uses, by way
of emphasis and relief of nervous strain. Bad habit?
Sure thing ! Unnecessary ? Sure thing ! Ought to be
stopped? Sure thing! Let's condemn humanity for
swearing, therefore; let's — let's thunder against it in

70 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the press; let's fine and imprison and classify as
wicked and altogether base, such persons as are pro-
fane— what do you say to that? I say, "No. Let's
pray a little ourselves and raise the average." Let's
look at the world as one of fair average of wickedness
and errors and let's try to raise that average by doing
right ourselves and not paying too much attention to
our neighbor's misdoing. If we all do that, we will
have no bad neighbors. They will all be as perfect as
we are. And won't that be lovely !

Now I don't want any good Christian person to
write me — many people have been writing me — and
say that this signifies a plea for profanity. I don't
mean anything like that. The bad is bad ; but we don't
want to be looking at the bad too much. We should
remember that dirt collects even in our own houses.
Let's keep them clean and forget it. It is a penalty of
living in an imperfect world. We will do better to be-
lieve in the cleanly part of humanity and look for it.
Many people spend all their lives bemoaning the evil
that other people do. Ninety-nine per cent of it is a
part of some great evolution of God. A few years ago
we growled at the evil men were doing in slavery. We
had a great war to free our land from it. The results
are felt in this war. The evil stood big in our eyes.
It beclouded man's vision. It blinded him to the love
of home, the traditions of friendliness, the desires that
were in the Southern heart. We went to work and
fought and prayed and we raised the average. Those
people were not to be classified as wicked altogether.
God was using them to bring about a great ethical and
religious lesson to the world. If we could only take
folks on the average and not condemn them wholly
when they should be condemned only in part, we would
get along faster.

So I say that what we need in the discussion of
current topics in which apparent wrong meets our eye

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 71

is a greater measure of that message of the Master,
"Judge not; that ye be not judged" and in the spirit of
David's appeal to judge the world "in righteousness."
In other words we must let facts talk instead of pas-
sions and prejudices and unfounded inferences as to
the altogether wickedness of those whom we criticise.
For, I do not believe that there is any person in whom
there is not good. I do believe that there is a fair
average of good in a great average of the world.
What we have to do is to forget the classification — at-
tack the wrong, leave out the personality and by pray-
er and fight correct the error and raise the average of
the world to another notch.

That's what we are trying to do with the Hun.

ON "WHY ONE MAN SUCCEEDED"

HERE was once a merchant in Lewiston named
George Ellard.

He started life in Boston as porter in a
shoe store. He never took any account of
hours. When he was not working as porter
he was sizing up shoes and working over
the stock.

"One day I went home," said he to me once, "and in
iny pay envelope I found a mistake. The store had
paid me too much. I took it back. The proprietor
said that it was not a mistake. It happened several
times after that while I worked there. But I kept
right on working my full time on something, never
'sojering,' never bothering other help by standing
around talking to them, never doing injustice to my
employers.

One day the proprietor said to Ellard: "George, do
you know where I can find a good, strong man, willing

72 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

to work and take an interest in the success of this con-
cern? I want a man who feels glad if we succeed; a
man who will help us make the money that we pay
him for work done — just the same as others pay us for
work done."

"What's the matter with me for porter?" said
George Ellard.

"You, George," said the boss, "why you won't do.
You are to be superintendent of this whole concern.
You go on to that job tomorrow if I can find your suc-
cessor."

By and by George Ellard decided that he would
come to Lewiston and start his own shoe store. The
concern for which he had worked in Boston said to
him: "Sorry to lose you, George! But you know best.
You may have our help in everything. If you want
any bargains that we can give you, they are yours.
We shall watch out for you in that way. If you want
more credit, we shall try to get it for you."

George Ellard grew wealthy and honored in Lewis-
ton. He was a fine type of sturdy manhood. He died
here some years ago.

George Ellard was one of over 150 men employed in
that Boston jobbing house of shoes. He stepped ahead
because he never tried to get something for nothing;
because he felt that his constancy would be appreciated
as it was; because he never tried to beat the clock.
The other 149 never got out of the rut.

ON "BELIEVING"

HE WRITER of these little talks has received
the following from Frank H. Briggs of Wash-
ington, D. C, formerly of Auburn, Maine,
dated May 2d.

If I mistake not, you are writing "Just
Talks — On Common Themes." I like them.
They are interesting. They are helpful. "The Voice
of the Frog and Toad" particularly appeals to me just
now. The spirit of courage and optimism therein ex-
pressed reminds me of an experience of our friend
Clark when in France three years ago. He visited
Vaubecourt where the church had been demolished by
the shell-fire of the Huns. He called upon the Priest
who had conducted services in the ruined church and
whose house was standing close to the ruin. When
Clark approached, the Priest was on a ladder fastening
vines to the side of his house. Coming down from the
ladder he said to Clark, "My vines will do well now,
they get more sun than they did last year."

Can you beat that for optimism? The good old
man then said, "You are a writer and will send news
stories back to America," and with tears streaming
down his cheeks he added, "Be good to France, be good
to France." And Clark has been good to her. He says
that every Frenchman is a tragic poet. On a knoll
where a bloody battle was fought in 1914, sixty-seven
French soldiers were buried. Some one erected a plain
wooden cross and wrote upon it in pencil "Sixty-seven
French soldiers lie buried here. They are dead, but who
lives? FRANCE."

Yes, spring will come to the hearts of those heroes.
* * *

The "Clark" referred to in this letter is a newspa-
per man "of a different kind" — one of the truly conse-
crated newspaper men who make us feel better for our

74 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

profession when we think of them. Much of the poet,
all of the idealist, he is a sort of iconoclast also — as I
size him up — ready to break all of the idols of false
gods. He has been in Washington as a correspondent
of some of the great Chicago dailies for years. When
the war broke out in Europe he was restless until he
broke into the game and spent his life, almost, in it.
He managed the Roosevelt campaign of publicity pre-
liminary to the Chicago convention of 1916. He is an
ornithologist and has written monographs on certain
birds. He admires Col. Theodore Roosevelt above oth-
er Americans — and T. R. liked him and they were
personal friends. Such a man could not help being an
optimist and a worker and a dreamer.

But enough of Clark — charming as he is and clever
and all of that. He would not cut much figure even
with these if he did not believe. That's the touchstone
— to be eternally, absolutely, altogether believing some-
thing, believing it with your whole soul, believing it
with your whole heart, believing it with your con-
science, believing it with your sacrifices, believing it
with your faith. Clark is one of that sort. He be-
lieves a thing just as William Lloyd Garrison did.
He'd die for it.

And this brings me to the point of my "Just Talk."

The sixty-seven French soldiers believed something.
France believes. America is beginning — just begin-
ning— to believe.

As the Priest at Vaubecourt believed in God — the
sun would bring the blossoms to the vines — so we must
absolutely believe that God will bring the sunshine to
the earth.

You must believe! Accent that word, please.
When you say, "believe," jump into it all over. Belief
casts out all doubt. If you believe, you will be happy
and when you are happy you work like the very old
scratch.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 75

"He that believeth on Me, tho he were dead, yet
shall he live."

Are you dead — in all enthusiasms, all faiths, all
hopes, all activities ? If not — ^believe in something.

ON "IT COSTS BUT TWO CENTS"

E FIND a good many people who think that a
newspaper costs two cents.

So, too, there's a good many people who
think that the pew-rent is ten dollars a year.
One is about as near right as the other and
both are wrong.
The pew-rent costs martyrdom, a Christ on the
cross, crusades, holy wars, inquisition, trains of mis-
sionaries, sacrifices in flame and blood wearying vigils
by the midnight lamp, holy women in the church, the
blood of Saints, the Pilgrim Fathers, the treasure of
ages.

The newspaper — I will be pardoned for the compari-
son with the church — cost four hundred years of battle
for human liberty, men imprisoned for the sake of
truth, early martyrs in the stocks, the ears of Prynne,
the pillory for Defoe, the tail of the cart to Tyburn for
Roger L'Estrange, jail and the hangman's bonfire for
early American colonial editors, the trials of John
Wilkes and Junius, the throes of Milton's "Aeropa-
gitica," the perils of the Massachusetts Spy and the
ride of Paul Revere.

The newspaper — a two-cent proposition!
It is one of the largest industries in the United
States. The printing business is capitalized at $720,-
231,654 in the U. S. It employs over 700,000 people.
There are 25,000 newspapers. Their income is over
$810,000,000 a year. They circulate over 31,000,000

76 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

copies every day of the daily newspaper. Of all papers
and periodicals they circulate a total of 250,594,907
copies per issue. The total number of daily papers
issued in a year is more than 9,000,000,000 — over nine
thousand million. A twelve page paper will take over
nine feet of paper a yard wide. The web of paper
needed to print all of the daily papers of America for
a year would be 81,000 million feet long. The web of
paper from the daily press of America will reach from
earth to sun in a few years.

One New York newspaper has a yearly expense ac-
count of about $5,000,000. Some manufacturing in-
dustry, is it not? It costs one American newspaper
close to two millions a year for newsprint paper and
ink. Some little two-cent paper, eh! Only it is sold
for a cent a copy.

What else — some brains, some responsibility, some
risk, some patience, some genius, some courage, some
power, some faith, some hope, some foresight, some
statesmanship, some philosophy, some study, some
work.

A newspaper costs also heart and soul, gray hairs
and early graves. It calls on conscience, and demands
the sacrifice of comfort and vacations. It is manufac-
turing, preachment, prophecy, business risk and many
other hazards, combined.

It is eternal watchfulness — ^blazing competition in
the search of news, heroes in every field, all habited
places of earth, under the earth, under the sea, in the
skies, over battle fields, over the top, in the trenches, in
the cabinets, in the courts, in commerce and in finance
— all specialists — all for two cents a day.

NOW! Do you think that it costs but two cents.
True, that's what it sells for. But it costs! As well
ask what freedom costs !

ON "A NIGHT IN THE OPEN"

HE night began to shut down and we were far
from camp. We might have made it, but the
October sunset enticed us and the swift flying
twilight bade us stay. There would be worry
in camp, but there would be something
new out here, in the open, and Adventure
beckoned us with winsome smile.

We built a fire in the open tote-road by the side of a
low embankment of tall grasses. The tote-road is a
sort of Fifth Avenue in the deep woods. It was built
for carrying supplies to logging camps. It had been
long since abandoned and its grassy way is now un-
touched by the slow, grinding runner of the heavy
sleds. The trees stand all around it, deep, mysterious.
If you will step out into the middle of the road and look
upward you may see the stars. But if you look right
or left or straight ahead or backward there are the tall
trees watching you and swaying to and fro as tho mov-
ing to some song of the forests.

We had supper — not much — ^but a few remnants of
a luncheon and a partridge that we plucked and roasted
on a spit before the open fire. Then we lit our pipes
and lay on the boughs that we had cut and piled up
alongside the embankment of the road. And then we
were very comfortable, on the soft bed, feet to the fire,
Injun fashion. The sparks from the fire rose softly up
into the cool, fresh air. It was too pleasant for words.
Flames from an open fire in the woods have a curious
way with them. They seem to be very friendly and
social. They comfort one as never can they do else-
where— not even in the broad fireplace. There, they
are circumscribed.. Here, they seem to reach out
and, now and then, open up vistas in the woods and
then shut them quickly as tho permitting you to peep
into woodland arcana. I remember looking out into

78 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

them as tho into cathedrals — the columnar vastness of
St. Peter's at Rome or that wonderful nave at Milan.

You will easily fall asleep with your feet to the open
fire of a night, in the open. And then, something will
awaken you, and you will declare that it is the stillness.
In reality it is the forest calling you to arouse and hear
its story. It sighs and sings. It rubs branches to-
gether as the man plays the bull-fiddle. It has high
trebles in the upper levels. The brooks play like harps,
away off. There is a low rustling of indefinable things.
It might be tiny life, surging to and fro, underfoot. It
might be some vast spirit of the forest, moving among
the trees. Often you are not sure that it is a sound.
It may be only the throbbing of your life-blood in the
intense stillness.

I remember that along about two o'clock in the
morning when it was very dark, I arose and put more
wood on the fire. Then I stepped out into the road
and looked up into the sky. Far up, and up, swung the
spruce tops. All around hummed the wind in the sur-
face of the forest-deeps, as the winds swing over the
the ocean tops to them on the floor of the sea. Every-
thing was full of immensity, primordial. And yet, in
that hour, I had an actual experience. Instead of feel-
ing myself but an atom, but a tiny thing amid all this,
I suddenly and forever came to feel myself one with
pine and spruce, with the leaf and branch, with the
listening things in the woods, with the spirits and fays,
that might be all about me, — one, even, with Arcturus
and Orion and all the gleaming suns that shone on
high. I never had a greater accession of Faith.

If you are inclined to doubt God, go into the woods ;
camp of a night by the open camp-fire and observe His
ways. For the camp-fire's gleam reaches to the stars
and often brings their shining down into the human
heart. God may lay his hands on you some night

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 79

when you are out in the open. He has, on a great
many people, by sea and by land.

The next day we went rather sheepishly to camp.
"Why didn't you come home ?" asked they.

"Well, you see," said my companion, and then
paused.

"How in the name of the Lord could we?" said L
And they never knew what I meant.

ON "TOM AND HIS HATCHET'

ID YOU ever read Rabelais' story of Tom Well-
hung, the honest country fellow of Gravot,
who lost his hatchet and set up such a bellow-
ing to Jupiter that he disturbed the gods at
their council until Jupiter sent Mercury down
to find out what was the trouble?
When the light-heeled deity came back and reported
to the Gods, Jupiter said to Mercury, "Run down and
give the poor fellow three hatchets — one his own, one
of gold and one of silver. If he take his own, give him
the other two ; if he take the silver or the gold, chop off
his head with his own and henceforth serve me all
losers of hatchets the same."

So Mercury does as bid and in a trice he alights
nimbly on earth and throwing down the three hatchets,
says : "Thou has bawled long enough to be a' dry ; thy
prayers are granted by Jupiter; see which of these is
thy hatchet and take it away with thee."

Tom lifts up the golden hatchet; peeps on it and
finds it heavy; then staring at Mercury, says, "Cods-
zouks, this is none o' mine ; I won't ha' 't." The same
he does with the silver. At last he takes up his own
hatchet, examines it at the end of the helve and finds
his own mark there and ravished with joy, he cries,
"By the mass, this is my hatchet."

80 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

"Honest fellow," says Mercury, "I leave it with
thee ; take it ; and because thou hast wished moderately
and chosen justly, Jupiter gives you these two others.
Thou hast now the means to be rich. Be also honest."

Tom started off and went his way. Finally he
came to the city of Chinon where he sold his silver and
gold hatchets and bought lands and barns and a great
many other things that Master Francois gives in detail
as is his wont. And he was very rich.

His brother bumpkins became amazed at Tom's for-
tune and made it their business to find out how he got
it, and learning that it was by losing a hatchet, they
sold everything and bought hatchets and lost them and
their laments stirred again the councils of heaven and
brought Jupiter to account. The bumpkins brayed
and bellowed and prayed. "Ho, ho Jupiter, my hatchet,
my hatchet!" The air rang with the cries of these
rascally losers of hatchets.

Mercury was nimble in bringing them hatchets.
To each the offering was the same — a silver, a gold,
and the hatchet that he had lost. Each loser was for
the gold, giving thanks in abundance to Jupiter, but in
the nick of time as he bowed and stooped to take it
from the ground! Whip! in a trice. Mercury cut off
his head as commanded. And of heads there was just
the same number as there was of lost hatchets.

You see how it was with these rascals. You see
how it is now with most of those who wish something
easy. They never wish in moderation — never satisfied
with what good fortune brings them, let it be much or
little.

Will you be like him of whom Rabelais tells — ^who
wished that Our Lady's church were brim full of steel
needles to the spire and that he could have as many
ducats as might be crammed into as many bags as
might be sewed with these needles, until they wore out
both at point and eye.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 81

Wish, therefore, for mediocrity and it shall be given
to you and over and above yet ; that is to say, provided
you bestir yourselves manfully and do your very best
in the meantime.

ON "TREES AND FORESTS"

T IS USUALLY the case that we do not prize
what we have, as fully as we should. In the
days of the pioneers there was an inborn
hatred of the forests. They were dark,
dreadful and inhabited by wild beasts. They
say that, at Andover Seminary seventy-five
years ago, if a young student wanted to ingratiate him-
self with the faculty he went out before breakfast and
cut down one or two of the beautiful trees in their
great avenue before anyone was awake. The govern-
ment took a certain care of the forests for ship-build-
building and after that, dropped the subject for years.
Maine got rid of her forests largely because people
hated them. They wanted farms, fields, settlers, rail-
roads.

Like many other good things, regard for the tree
has come into its own again. It is time for the govern-
ment of states again to take the tree in charge. It is
high time that trees were a public ward and no man
could cut them even on his own land, without public
consent. Without trees we should have barrenness all
over the land. Why let the portable saw mill starve a
state?

So it is that in every civilized community, the own-
ership of forests eventually comes to the government.
It is estimated that even the most acute business man
does not look forward over six years. The state ought
to do better than this. The state ought to bet on the

82 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

forest and appropriate its money to buying them for
the people. The state of Maine ought to spend a mil-
lion dollars every two years on buying up its own do-
main for the people. If I were Governor, or a candi-
date for Governor, this would be my platform. I would
buy land for the Folks. Frederick the Great did it and
Prussia is somewhat pummeling us because her taxes
have been so light these hundreds of years because of
the income from the forests.

I was reading the other day a little story in one of
Edward Everett Hale's books about Bishop Watson —
he wrote the "Apology, you know — !" How very angry
he was with Charles James Fox because he gave him
what Watson called the poorest see in England! But
Watson had a stubborn streak in him and when he
found himself in the north of Wales, where the sav-
agery of generations had destroyed all of the wood, he
put in his time and his sixpences planting firs on
ground that seemed worthless. He outlived the six-
year period and kept on raising seedling firs and plant-
ing them and when he died his people found themselves,
to their surprise, among the richest men in England
because the trees had grown, while their father was
both asleep and awake.

In 1900, Prussia received over ten million dollars
revenue from her forests after they had paid all ex-
penses of care and development. There is one institu-
tion in Maine that is almost as worthy to own the for-
ests as is the state — ^because it is wise under a great
man — and that is the Great Northern Paper Co. Its
President, Garret Schenck, is a man who sees over six
years forward. He cuts only the "crop" of trees — nev-
er devastates. He is a "builder." Would that there
were more like Garret Schenck — a man whom Maine
ought to decorate with the Legion of Honor.

There is no more an inborn hatred of the tree. We
have begun to revere it. We consider as wanton and

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 83

ruthless, the man who fells a beautiful elm for com-
merce. He has cut down and killed a living thing,
something beautiful as a cathedral — in its way. We
look to forests as to sanctuaries — ^taverns of rest for
cur very souls ; nearer to God than the town ; carpeted
with finer tapestries than the looms can make; aisled
with silver pathways for the living streams; studded
overhead with gold and jade and chrysoprase; all the
while beating and throbbing with the free music of
the winds in the trees — an organ whose melodies are
supreme and sempiternal.

Can't we — a free people — do something to save for
our children and their children, every year a little
more and more of the domain of this sort — next to the
church, in devotional impulse, better than some hospi-
tals in its healing ? I vote for it ! Do you ? If you do
— say so!

ON "THE GOLDEN RULE IN DAILY LIFE"

BOUT thirty-two years ago, a calendar came to
my desk that served a good purpose.

It bore on the top of it, a good-sized pic-
ture of a carpenter's square printed in bright
gold and, under it, these words, "The Golden
Rule : As ye would that others should do unto
you, do ye even so unto them."

It occurred to me that this was a very good rule in
newspaper reporting and that if followed, it would save
many a heart-burning ; soothe many a pillow ; ease over
many a difficulty. I am taking no credit and am will-
i.-g to let things go so far as I am concerned, as I
stand conscious of many shortcomings and many fail-
ures, but none the less sure, this rule has saved
many a person in these cities in these thirty years or
more from much distress.

84 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

"Put yourself in the other fellow's place." A small
indiscretion; a lapse from the straight way, a chance
for the newspaper to make public the ignominy — all of
these are to be counted as tho you, yourself, sad and
repentant, faced the ignominy of the big-type and the
headliners on the front page. There is no power so
blighting as printer's ink. It is often placed in the
hands of immaturity. A mere boy may hold in his
hand the very dynamite of publicity that may blast
homes, break hearts, ruin lives and weaken hope. Not
that crime, wickedness and deceit do not need to be
scourged. They must be. Scorpion's whips are not
too much for wilful men and women who debase public
life and morals.

But the golden things of life are those that, after
all, have not been printed. I recall one Christmas eve
when a father, whose wayward son had been appre-
hended in wrong-doing, came to me and asked for con-
sideration on this day when of all days it was peace on
earth, good-will to men. It was a serious matter, but
repentance was on its way. Yet it was "news." Yes, it
was news. But it was something else than news also.
It was condemnation. The story never happened. The
young man is now a fine and capable business man.
We have never spoken of it since, but I doubt not that
every Christmas day he says something to himself
about it.

It is safe to say that there is no better rule of con-
duct in life than this one: No man who has power of
any kind can afford to slight it. It applies with just as
much force and effect to other business than the news-
paper-business. But in a thousand ways it has oper-
ated in the life of this business to far greater good than
can be measured.

Try it out! Look at everything from the view-
point of the other man or woman. Say to yourself,
"Would I like to have this thing done to me, that I am

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 85

proposing to do to my fellow-man ?" If you are going
to attack a man personally, even if you have the goods,
think it over : "Is this in the interest of public good, or
is it merely to satisfy a personal spite or a feeling of
revenge ?" And then ask, "How would I like it, under
the circumstances, if the situation were reversed?"

This is very old stuff. It was said a very great
while ago. But it has stood the test of time and a bil-
lion or more instances. It is good religion, good mor-
als, good business. It is the white way. It is the help-
ful way. Society never suffered from it.

If the Huns had only thought of it, there would have
been no war — no superman philosophy, no reign of
frightfulness, no rapings in Belgium, no bayoneting of
helpless non-combatants, no hereafter, in the day when
the grim reckoning will be made — here, or before the
Master. Nearly all religion is comprised in it; for it
suggests the adoption of the first commandment, which
is the greatest : "Thou shalt love thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength,
and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

ON "THE QUIETER ROAD"

FTER you have driven for many miles on a
level, man-made road, it is pleasant to turn
aside on one of those old-fashioned country
roads that seem just to have happened.

They meander aimlessly under arching
trees, the wheel-ruts soft to the tires and
making no sound. You can see no distance ahead and
are therefore content to drive slowly and get acquaint-
ed with a friendly road.

There is spur and opportunity for thinking in the
lazy country road. In the first place you have been go-

86 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

ing too fast, anyway, on the boulevard. You have been
burning up things — gasoline, tires, money, nerves,
time, human-companionship, home-ties. You have been
just speeding thru the air, seeing nothing, eyes fixed on
the road, straight-ahead monotony hour by hour, day
by day, mind attuned to nothing but getting there and
then getting elsewhere, speed-mad.

So — when you do turn aside into the quiet country
road for a time and lean back, perhaps you have time
to notice who is at your side. She's your wife — I hope.
You can possibly find time to take her hand as you did
in the long ago, and say a sweet word to her. Perhaps
you may be able to forget business long enough to get
sentimental. It will do no harm — on a country road —
when the trees arch low and the birds chatter love-
lyrics. You can perhaps draw a long breath and light
a cigar and go so slowly that the smoke will rise in in-
cense around your head and filter thru the trees. You
can stretch your legs and unbutton your vest and be a
man. You can inhale long, long breaths of this kind
of air and never get a sniff of engine-exhaust. This
sort of a road leads you away from towns and tempta-
tion, where you may forget in what country you are
traveling. You notice how the sunshine checkers the
brown earth of the old meandering road and lies also
lovingly on your garments. To be decent you should
ride not over six miles an hour — or two — ^in this sanc-
tuary. Otherwise you will disturb the chipmunks and
disconcert Madame Partridge and send her scurrying
away with her brood. If it is the right kind of a road
— and this one is of the right kind — ^you will meet no
one. If it is the right kind of a road even the guide-
board is down and points to heaven significantly and
very truthfully — some Harrison or Bethel in the skies.
You may even stop in the road and hear no horn
of displeasure behind you, tooting you "off the earth."
You may hear a stake-driver or a whip-poor-will or see
a deer, in any midsummer day.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 87

It is the road on which, as Thoreau says of his road
"to the Corner," one "can walk and recover the lost
child that I am, without ringing any bell ; where noth-
ing ever was discovered to detain a traveler; where I
never passed the time of day with anyone — being in-
different to arbitrary divisions of time; where Tullius
Hostilius might have disappeared, at any rate has nev-
er been seen." The pale lobelia and the Canada snap-
dragon, a little hardback and meadow-sweet peep over
the fence, nothing more serious to obstruct the view.
A road that passes over the height of land between
earth and Heaven separating those streams that flow
earthward from those that flow heavenward.

About six miles an hour — I have suggested. It may
bring you into strange clearings, dooryards that run
down to the old road. These casual glimpses of life
strengthen the pleasure of the solitude, as you run on,
up hill and down, around sly corners where the trees
bend to the road. Just a bit like life itself, isn't it!
Off the boulevard — when the nerves give out ! Out of
the sight and sound of traffic when the fired body re-
fuses longer to function. Back to nature when the old
"doc" takes his finger off your pulse and says "rest-
cure for you."

Why not quit the boulevard, occasionally now and
then before the "old doc" warns you? Why not slow
up and turn into some old-fashioned meandering coun-
try road, where it makes no odds which way you fare
whether you are coming or going; where the spirit is
free and the soul is at peace. You will do it eventually
— why not now?

ON "THE TRUTH WITHOUT A TEXT'

E ARE ALL under sentence of death, said
Walter Pater in a famous paragraph. Hence
we should not spend our time here in listless-
ness but should give ourselves up to art and
song.

That was written some years ago. Of
course one must not say such things now. Art and
song are out-of-date. All emotions but hate and desire
to kill are tabooed. One feels himself a slacker to be
talking about art and song — much less give himself up
to them. Such things as made Shakespeare, Milton,
Wordsworth, Goethe, Michelangelo, Tennyson, Shelley
— these are no longer to be compared with the
Kaiser and his sons. It used to be a common phil-
osophy that art and song and literature counted. Now
it is the machine-gun and the poison^shell. But after
all — we have hopes. We believe that Truth is mighty.
These days of anxiety are long. Days of despair
are longer. The plain fact is that we must not let go
of art and song. We must not let go of Truth and
Beauty and Goodness. Whatever happens, we must
not lose faith in the Providence of God. We must go
to some place to find it when the things around us seem
very dark. If it is in your Bible, seek it. If it is at
your confessor's knees, seek it. Art and song were
about all of Pater's religion. He was a semi-pagan of
epicureanism. Perhaps YOU have something else.
Go to it. But whatever you do, don't give up even if
the Germans hammer at the gates of America.

One of the best remedies in this troubled age, is to
do your bit every day and then take a walk into the
fields and woods. They are tuneful of the thrush, which
is not yet aware of being a slacker, and all blossoming
with the posies, unaware that this is the era of fright-
fulness. Out there a man has a right to lift his head

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 89

and smile into the face of God. He is no slacker, walk-
ing in a field. He is no shirker, seeking the solution of
the mystery of the sentence of death, out where the
blossoms scent the air. If it be wrong to give thought
to art and song, why thus do trail and bloom all the
flowers of Milton's "Lycidas," Arnold's "Thyrsis" and
Shelley's "Question?"

Hills erode ; oak-trees fall ; but they outlast dynas-
ties. As I have said, poppies spring from crater-pits.
Nature cannot be beaten or gassed; or driven beyond
the Marne. If you go into the June woods and lie on
your back at noon, you may see the eagle nesting her
young — a liberty that symbolizes our national hopes.
The trees stand very erect and independent. If they
fall, they fertilize. If they pass the season and become
dead in foliage, they have seeded new patches on which
the sunlight falls. Here is life-eternal, unending,
resurrectionary. If this were undisturbed a billion
years, still would Nature keep on reproducing its ener-
gies. It is the work of God alone. Man never had a
hand in it. It is the Creator's own garden-spot. Here
He shows you what is what. Who's who does not
count. Here are color, art, song, religion, purpose,
divinity. Go out and find them.

And if you stay until evening and the slant rays of
the sun linger among the tree-trunks as thru stained
glass windows in the cathedral of pillars, and the day
grows grave and reverend, you may look up thru the
branches and see the evening stars.

Perhaps there is one for you.

If so, it will surely comfort and uplift you. And
this is no sermon. It is the cold truth, without a text.

ON THE "LADIES"

HE "ladie" (or rather "woman," which is the
preferable term because it is older) is es-
sential. There were no "ladies" in the Bible
but there were a number of women. If they
had not been essential, it is very likely that
man would have tried to get along without
them and save expenses. Adam tried it a couple of
days and caved in. They have since been taken on as
a regular thing and are now saving the world for de-
mocracy with war-bread.

Inasmuch as they have been in the world quite a
while, it is customary to say that the ladies have ad-
vanced in power and in liberty. And this is probably
true. Take some of the notable women and think how
they were held back in the old days. There was Joan
of Arc! Kept under an apple tree until she was six-
teen years old, or thereabout, she was let loose in armor
and so repressed by the conservative spirit of the times
that all she was permitted to do was to storm a few
cities, capture a few princes, crown a king or two, con-
fute the learned judges at her trial, save a nation
and die in the flames of martyrdom to rise from her
ashes to be the Voice, the appeal, the spiritual salva-
tion of a nation. Consider the idle and repressed ex-
istence of Cleopatra ! There was a woman who might
have made something of herself if she had been given
half a chance. She was only a Queen of Egypt and a
few other communities, roaming around in barges,
dressed in nothing but a camisole ; setting modern fash-
ions and working out the fate of a few Roman poten-
tates. Nothing but serfdom, that's what! Then
there was Lucretia Borgia ! A timid, shrinking thing !
Think what a bully good Red Cross she would be today
in Kaiser Bill's immediate family. What a boon she
would be to society if she could only be over there mix-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 91

ing cooling drinks for the Hohenzollern family. Then
there was that blushing violet of a woman, Queen
Elizabeth. What a place would she take today in soci-
ety. I can see her now, taking her place as a "lady"
among women, dancing the fox-trot in perfect freedom
and perspiring freely in a peekaboo waist with pink
ribbons showing daintily thru. Poor Queen Elizabeth !
She never really had a chance. No more did Boadicea
or Sappho or Molly Pitcher or a number of other
women.

Of course we hear a good deal more about the ladies
now than we used to and we see a good deal more of
them. That is, so to speak, if one's eyesight is good.
It appears from what one may hear and see, even if he
does wear bi-f ocal spectacles — that woman is emerging
from her hitherto environment. But I don't know
about that. Eve had some environment. Of course
she really made the fashions and had no rivals. The
VDgue was simple in her day, but she did her best.
And in some sense she was ahead of her time. And
she was not extravagant. Nobody can say that of Eve,
when he looks back, and, as Mark Twain says, sees our
simple and lowly first of women garbed in her modifi-
cation of Harry Lauder's Highland costume.

So, in my humble opinion, woman has not changed
so much. Some men have tried to keep her back, but
they have not succeeded. They have tried to keep her
brains in chains ; but you will notice that it has been a
hard job. It is no longer possible to deny her the pos-
session of a soul, an entity whose future is hers to de-
termine, in all freedom under the law. She has the
same right that man has to the establishment of her
s'^rvice to the world, by work, by voice, by vote.

And spiritually, in the sympathy of her service, she
far transcends man. The world is full of Florence
Nightingales, today. They are all over the death-
strewn fields of Flanders and Verdun. They are hourly

92 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

playing the part of hero with stout hearts and un-
thinking altruism. And they are suffering losses —
deep wounds in the heart of hearts, where the first-
born cuddled and crooned. We talk a lot about emanci-
pation of woman. But bear this in mind — ^whenever
she had a chance — as queen or warrior, or poet, or
preacher, or physician, or nurse, or scientist or cab-
driver, she has made good. The only agency from
which she needs to be emancipated is the narrow, two-
bit-wide opinion of the so-called man, who calls her a
lower order of creation, and who does not know what
creation means, as addressed to the human soul.

ON "THE PRICE OF A GOOD TIME"

SAW a moving-picture the other day entitled
"The Price of a Good Time." It was intended
to show that girls cannot monkey with
conventions, unless tragedy may follow.

So far, it was a fine picture. The poor girl
was led to suicide and the man went scot free.
And the other woman in the picture was softened and
induced to put off the garb of snobbishness. This
seemed tough. The girl was the least guilty in the
whole crowd. But she had to pay. And that is the
rule.

So girls better look out! They have to pay for
good times with usury. Others pay for them fre-
quently at going prices. The man who eats hot-sup-
pers to excess, pays for the good time with a warty
liver and "Bright's." The wine-bibber pays for his
time with a headache. The money-grubber and miser
pays for his "Good Time" by having his heirs fight over
his will. The Speed-demon pays for his good time in a
smash-up. The man who takes revenge into his own
hand and whose idea of a "Good Time" is carried into

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 93

effect, dies in the Chair or passes his days in a prison.
But the girl pays the highest price of all. There was
an indelible mark on the Magdalene.

But in this picture, the stress was laid on the home,
from which this particular girl went to her "Good
Time." It was a tough-looking home. Colors are laid
on moving pictures with a broad brush. Here was a
brother, preaching anarchism ; a disagreeable mother ;
a paralytic father, who had to be fed with a spoon and
who dribbled his bread and milk over his chin. This
was shown as a foil to a happy home in which the girl
had no need to go elsewhere for her fun. This was, of
course, the home of one of those care-free and portly
persons, known as the traffic-cop. His home was
sweet. His girl could have her "steady" come every
evening and sit on the door-steps. Not so the other
girl. Her home-life was cold, hard, full of nagging,
sordid, depressing. She went, therefore, where she
could have her "Good Time." And she settled.

This is a very old story and very crudely told; but
there is truth in it and the kind of truth that has to be
enforced frequently, lest we forget. Girls who have
good homes, sometimes seem to lack appreciation, but
as a rule they are not so apt to be driven to the streets
by this modern lust for a "Good Time." At any rate,
the household where there is fun and laughter and
friendship and sweet forbearance, is not so apt to have
its tragedies. And if it does have them, there is no
recrimination. Those who have made it a "home,"
have at least done their best. The filial love — a sweeter
thing does not exist — could not have been extin-
guished there! It must have been trampled on, out-
side the premises, by some Hun.

So, most people who saw the picture, found a fairly
good lesson in it. And there are a lot of good lessons
in the movies. They are often enforced with a blud-
geon, so to speak, but they get there mostly. If any

94

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

girl in the audience was touched by this picture to the
degree of pledging herself to count the cost of "good
times" before breaking the rule of "Safety First" for
her name, her good repute, her mother's heart, her fa-
ther's faith — it has done a work that the church may
emulate.

The "Good Time" is quickly over. The long, long
life stretches before you. You don't want to walk its
pathway as a social, a moral cripple, but upright, with
the crown of womanhood like a halo and the sense of
devotion and righteousness as supporting arms.

ON "THE WIND AND THE SOUL"

NE day last fall I went into the woods, under
the shadow of Little Spencer mountain, not
so very far from the Canadian border. It
was a Sunday and the winds were blowing an
October gale until the ponds were full of
racing white-caps and the beaches lashed
themselves white with foam and the torn roots of the
lily pads tossed high into the shore grasses, dripping
with the water.

The path was along "the blazed trail" to the old
lumber-camps — a peaceful path, among very large first-
growth spruce, over a running brook and, all of the
while, in a dense solitude that had no roads or paths
save the blazed trail. It was after two o'clock in the
afternoon and the sun was westering thru the tops of
the trees, but below all was faintly lighted as are the
deep woods.

It was the gale in the tree-tops that got me. It
sounded with the swaying and groaning and the sweep-
ing on, wave after wave, most like the riding of Huns
on the "coursers of the air." I sat on a huge tree whose

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 95

trunk, broken in some gale, had fallen over the trail.
Say! Everyone ought to go out alone and get ac-
quainted with himself some day like this when the
wind blows and Nature is rioting.

All of the elves of the upper world seemed to be
playing up there. No one knows what strange fancies
may come and what poem may come from it.

I wrote something and left it where I wrote it on
the clean scarf of the prostrate spruce, which I made
with my hunting knife. I expect it was a poor verse.
But I remember that then I thought it fine because I
was deeply moved by the music — the "immense" music
that played in a great symphony overhead. And the
other day — what do you suppose happened! A man
came into the office and asked for me. His name was
Ralph Cuddy. Said he, "I saw, last winter, on a tree in
the woods near Moosehead, way in by a brook that lies
next to a swamp, some verses you wrote and signed
about the wind in the tree-tops. I was thinking about
them today. I live in Portland. I had to come to
Lewiston. I decided to come in and see you. I am
going right back into the woods. I want to hear the
waves on the beaches. I want to hear the wind in the
trees."

Now the wind is a mystery and a friend and a foe
and a spur to wicked consciences and a balm to the sick
and a strange babbler. It is a night friend crooning in
the chimney. It is a wild and dissipated roisterer
howling around corners of dark nights like drunken
men in orgies. It is a banshee picking at the shutters
and rattling windows. It is a horde of furies in storms
as I have heard them in the Gulf Stream when ships
were going down to sea. It is a fine companion for the
striding heart of him who goes afield just to see the
clouds a-dancing. It is the piping of Peter Pan, if you
like. It is the music of a summer night. It is the kiss of
angels, on weary foreheads. It is the long, deep, in-

96 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

drawn breath of the planet and its exhalation. Oh,
man ! There are as many winds as you and all you love
may have of moods. It is a sigh, a song, a discord, a
dithyramb. The wind soft-foots around sometimes
in the woods like some animate thing. You can seem
to see it watching you from behind a bush. It draws
near, as Browning says, "with a running hush." It is
the voice of just one thing — life! for without it the
world would be dead. It is the breath of Nature thru
all its innumerable throats waking the world to a great
choral chant, for the glory of God !

Now that is not at all what I wrote on the clean,
white wood of the scarfed spruce last fall up there in
the woods. A chap has a right to be sentimental in the
woods, provided he does not impose it on any one.
But just the same, I would not give up the friendship
that I have for the wind, in all of its phases, for any
other thing in nature. The beating rains, the wild
gales! They soothe and refresh. They seem broth-
erly. And often I have had the notion, that in the last
hour — the last heart-beat, the wind, that loves us best,
comes along from its waiting thru all the ages and
takes care of the little new soul of us, just unfurling its
wings for "the new adventure" and upbears it and leads
it safely on, to the place appointed for it from the be-
ginning and so on world without end, forever and
forever.

ON "THE APPEAL OF MYSTERY"

HERE is a memory of old times that most of
us have now, undiminished by the years that
have passed. And that is the early morning
arrival of the circus. How we did love to get
up and see the circus come in.

I don't mean the modern circus that came
by railroad train, last year, but the circus that came in
over the road, fifty years ago — Stone and Murray's, for
instance, with its band wagon drawn by forty white
horses. Count them ! For-r-r-rty Hors-s-s-es !

"Here they come!" Dim thru the morning mist a
cloud of dust; the creaking of wagons; indistinct
sounds that we conjured into roaring of wild hyenas
and ravening of tigers and the bleeding of behemoths.
Every marvel that had adorned the sides of barns for
weeks — we anticipated and we expected to see; and
every glimpse out there on the roadside (barefooted
boys with more wonders before them than any circus
could ever give) was just so much, pilfered from the
show, whose admission was the untold sum of a quar-
ter of a dollar.

Then the dusty trail behind the show to town ; the
stay at the circus ground lugging water to assuage the
thirst of the elephant; the forgotten breakfast; the
tired lad trudging home about eleven o'clock to get
mother's tender comfort on his absence ; the nap before
dinner ; the return to the circus-ground ; the afternoon
show ; the evening regrets not to be able to see it again ;
the side-shows and ballyhoos ; the visions of actors in
tights thru the open fly of the dressing tent ; the sight
of the circus-people eating supper; the smells of the
sawdust and the animals — it is a composite picture of
the boyhood experiences of every man.

What was the lure of the circus? It was the lure
of the greatest joy of life — mystery. The mystery of

98 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

people is their greatest charm. Those people who are
commonplace, who never do the unexpected, have no
charm in the common use of the word. The lure of
books that endure is — mystery. A man writes a
learned book telling you all about life. Poor man!
With maybe fifty years of experience, telling you the
secret of life. Better read the Adventure of the Valor-
ous Knight Quixote de la Mancha. We link arms in
companionship with the man who has charm even if
he is short on facts ; for, after all, we use learning given
us much as we use money and spread it around and
have small regard for the person who gives it to us. It
is current coin hard to get and not so interesting ex-
cept for its uses. But the mystery-man — him we love
and follow.

To boyhood eyes the circus opened new worlds. So,
too, ever since in life we have been hunting for new
worlds. Some go to strange lands and over seas and
into the desert and over the mountain tops to find an-
swer to the desire.

This instinctive craving was planted for some pur-
pose— thus to be a ruling passion of man. The appeal
to crawl under the tent to see the glories on the other
side! The glimpses of strange creatures in gold and
tinsel! The desire not for facts alone but for things
never seen on sea or land! The eager yearning for
visions of some new apocalypse not in our native vil-
lage! All these are implanted in every man in some
degree — in some more than in others.

What is it all but a part of the elemental dower of
humankind that reaches out in the finite for what is to
be found only in the infinite.

So when we small boys in the dry and dusty dawn
a half a century ago, and when you boys of this later
age get up to see the circus — you are simply responding
to the call of Adam and Eve — to know mystery !

ON "THEM PANTS"

OODROW WILSON'S advent into high society
in London reminds me of my own — it is so
different. And as one must occasionally
lapse into the autobiographical, my readers
will forgive me if I digress a bit and call their
attention to a down-easter in London one
October evening in 1900.

It was the close of the first day and as in duty
bound it was my desire to make a stir in London, like
any true American — Mr. Wilson included. So before
leaving Maine, I bought a pair of trousers, designed by
a Lewiston tailor and warranted to be made on the
architecture of the latest word in London as seen on a
red and blue plate in the tailor-shop. As I recall it the
pants were red, in the picture, but I chose a more mod-
est color. As we came into Paddington, the city was
packed with returning Boer war veterans, the City Im-
perial Volunteers, and it was impossible to get a hotel
nearer in the city, so we stopped at this beautiful ter-
minal tavern. I did my duty to London by buying a
high hat. Nobody really was anybody, in London, in
those days, without a high hat. And that night a very
clever and stylish looking New York gentleman who
had been living in London, came over to the hotel to
take our party out for an evening in select society.
We had a fine little company of fellow-travelers, ladies
and gentlemen with us, and I decided to make London
sit up and take notice with my new trousers — other-
wise, "them pants."

I went up to my room to dress. The pants had never
been taken from the original package, but hung in all
their flowing beauty in the wardrobe in the fine old ma-
hogany room that we occupied. As I took them down,
they seemed to be indescribably long and flowing.
They seemed to be ells and ells longer than any pants

100 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I had ever owned before ; but there they were, just as I
had picked them; just as I had plucked them. I stood
them up straight on the carpet and the button of the
top looked me square in the eye. They had rotundity.
They had slack behind; they had breadth across the
crupper, that I never thought measured my girth. A
sinking of the heart befell me. With feverish haste I
stepped into those pants, aware that the eyes of royalty
and the ladies might rest upon them. I reached for
the seat of those pants and lo ! I was lost.

Dear friends! Picture me — a hurried departure
from Lewiston; a pair of pants built on impulse; the
only pair I had for the tout ensemble that went with
my new tall-hat ; the only pair that went with a frock
coat of the vintage of 1899 ; the only pair of pants in
London, and the guests hammering on the door with
theater tickets in their hands. What did I do ? Neces-
sity is the mother of safety-pins. I pulled the pants
up and took four cleats across the western front. I
looped up eleven yards across the Rhine ; I turned them
up around the bottoms; I drew in the jibsheet and
furled the mizzen-mast of "them pants." I laid away
yards and yards of slack in the dome of "them pants."
I pulled them flat over the abdomen but the conceal-
ment in the rear beat the rubbish in a back-alley. I held
the waistband of "them pants" in my teeth while I took
up plaits in the region of the pocket. I had to stand on
a chair to get into the watch-pocket of "them pants." I
could have rented the ell and a couple of furnished flats
in "them pants" and then had enough of "them pants"
left to build a Y. M. C. A. block. Once I fell into them
and almost smothered to death. If I put both hands
into the pants pocket at the same time, I caught myself
stealing money. I could have put all my baggage and
a hair mattress in the seat of "them pants" and then
had more room than there is in a union station. If I
had happened to have fallen down in them, I would
have crawled out of the leg.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 101

But I wore 'em. I had to, and as I buttoned my
vest over the top of the pants and stepped jauntily into
the midst of the waiting throng of friends, I felt like
William H. Taft. We passed thru many adventures
that evening. I sat on safety pins ; I looked down into
the bosom of my vest and saw the hem of "them pants"
slowly rising to engulf me, and then I took a walk.
Three times I narrowly escaped having my tall hat
pushed off by rising of the pants. Once the hem got
into a cup of tea that we were taking with the ladies —
sort of dropped over into the nectar. Once I looked
behind me on Piccadilly and the pants were chasing me
like a trail of crime. Once in a London club, they
picked up several safety pins where I arose.

All things end. I came home to my room at two
a.m. My room-mate, who had been elsewhere, sat
there. He weighed three hundred and four. He had
one leg in the seat of a pair of pants. Said he : "Who in
hell packed a little boy's pants in my bag ? Who in the
name of Tophet has built me a pair of trousers, age
seven years? I got into these about an hour ago, to
try them on, and say ! They aren't fit for publication.
If I had that dam tailor — "

But why pursue the subject. I had been dragging
the seat of his new trousers all over London and he had
been trying to strangle himself in mine. London never
knew the secret; but they date certain things in Lon-
don from the advent of "them pants," just the same.

ON "PITCHING QUATE'

HEY are at it again, pitching quoits down on a
pretty little street not far from our house —
just a neighborhood affair, with a lot of
Scotch blood mixed into it, thru their fore-
fathers. There are MacPhersons and Grants
and Fergusons and, now and then, one hears
a round of the Hieland in the comment.

And so, when the sun begins to lengthen the shad-
ows and the game is nearing the final rounds, it is a
pleasure to go over — to sit on the doorstep among the
mothers and the sisters who are there ; watch the gladi-
ators swing the discus and see it sail in parabola thru
the air to settle near the pin ; to hear the exclamations
of the players and to join in the stress and the vigor
of the game.

There is more in quoits than you think. It is not
merely pitching rings or horseshoes. It is a game,
with ancestry and traditions. It is old as the language
— and older. It is likely that Noah and his boys played
the game on dry land after the Ark settled and the clay
ariund the door was just right, soft enough to have the
quoit settle fair and soft in place. Its derivation is
suggestive. It comes from a word, "coiter," to "press
on." And that word comes from the Latin "coagere"
from "co" meaning together, and "agere," to lead. Is
it not fine? To press on; to lead together; in other
words "to carry on!" The watchword of the boys in
the trenches ; the symbol of a Nation that will never be
licked; never will falter; never will say die until the
ring is over the pin in far off Berlin !

To pitch quoits well (the older men call it "pitching
quate") one must have certain characteristics that go
well in business, in life, in the home. A man must have
strength of arm and of lung. It is a full-bodied game,
for quoits are no mere trifle to swing strongly and high

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 103

thru the air, a matter of fifty feet or more. He must
have judgment. He must have skill. He must have
wisdom and shrewdness. He must have endurance.
He must have self-control. Above all he must have the
power to do what Harry Lauder wants the world to do
— "Carry on." In other words he must never lose
heart.

Only the stout-hearted win at quoits. I like to see
them struggle when they are behind. If the game be
nineteen to nine — for instance, and but two points are
lacking for the leaders to go out and the other side
spurts and comes up swiftly on them, it takes a strong
will to maintain that steadiness of eye, that firmness of
hand to lay the quoit softly up alongside the pin, fifty
feet away, and never disturb the winning quoit which
he had thrown before. Oh ! It is fine to see it sail over
and come to rest in place. And then, too, the chivalry
of the game! It seems to be proverbial that no one
shall claim anything — ^but rather concede the claims of
others. But there are some masterful measurings.
With excited comment they clip the grasses and apply
them to the spaces between the quoits and the nearest
joint of the pin and then they measure the grasses and
decide in council to whom the point belongs. And
when the word goes up from the master of the game —
on it goes as before, happy and hearty. Golf has less
chivalry, tennis has no more than ancient and honor-
able quoits.

So here's to the ancient and honorable game of
quoits as played by the neighborhood, over beyond my
house, from supper-time until the curfew rings in the
2-lorious days of daylight saving.

ON "THE CLOCK OF THE CENTURIES'

NE THOUGHT persists with me that I have
never been able to express effectively, and
probably I cannot now. It is this: Every
day that ever passed on earth was the latest,
the up-to-date day.

When Noah built the Ark, he undoubtedly
felt himself a modern. He looked back on Adam as
ancient history. When Sodom and Gomorrah fell it
was the greatest calamity that had ever happened.
The Greeks thought that they had arrived. They
believed that they had reached the pinnacle and that
further progress was impossible. They prided them-
selves on their culture, their religion, their society, their
art, their learning. They were fin-de-siecle. Their
dandies were the last word and their theaters and their
games the triumph of artistic expression.

Some day, a thousand years hence — what will be
said of this age ? We have the printing-press, we have
many electrical discoveries. The air, the seas, under
the seas, the earth at our control, so far as transporta-
tion is concerned. How will we stand? Are we
already old-fashioned with our wars and our brutali-
ties?

An eminent professor of history and mathematics
has enforced the thought by an effort of the imagina-
tion. He has fancied a gigantic clock that records not
days, hours, minutes. These are all too small. His clock
records no space of time smaller than a century. Prof.
James Henry Robinson of Columbia University reckons
that man has been on earth about 240,000 years.
There are many different opinions on this subject, but
Prof. Robinson's is as good as any. If it be true that
man has stood erect, tail-less and thinking for himself
for 240,000 years, each hour on the clock represents
20,000 years, for we call ourselves now at noon — ^just

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 105

for the fun of it. Each minute is 300 years. Each
second is five years. Think of that — a clock which
ticks a second only once in five years. A clock that
ticks off a minute only in three centuries !

Now how does that clock look? What think you
happened in the dawn and in the morning hours of the
slow-moving clock? Absolutely nothing happened up
to half-past eleven o'clock! It was actually 11.40 a.m.
before the first record of Babylonian and Greek cul-
ture appears. Greek Philosophy was born at 11,50.
And that leaves us only ten minutes for all of recorded
history. Think of it — only 3,000 years out of the 240,-
000 of which we know the remotest thing ! It was only
a little more than 11.56 that the English nation became
dominated by William The Conqueror. It was only
two minutes ago that America was discovered. It was
only two minutes ago that printing from movable type
was discovered as an art. The United States has been
a nation less than a minute.

In short it has been only a minute or so that we
have actually been awake — as we see it. But the noon
will move on and on. And each hour will be the latest
syllable of recorded time and each day will be the last
word. And each yesterday will rise above our lowly
graves as old, old, old. When this clock ticks out an-
other minute and three more centuries have elapsed,
what will be our place in the world ? Will it stand for
rehabilitation and progress, or retrogression and de-
spair? The brave men living and dead on the fields of
Europe must make answer. They and we, who are
with them or against them here at home, and the spirit
of justice, dormant in lands now oppressed by militar-
ism, must settle the question.

ON "THE INTOLERABLE"

N OLD Roman philosopher says, "Don't take
upon yourself the burden of your whole life
at any one time, nor form an image of all
probable misfortunes. In any emergency, ask
yourself, "What is there intolerable in this ?"
In other words, it will be better not to bor-
row trouble and not to look too far ahead into the dark-
ness. Better make the best of present conditions and
confront the beast in the woods when you meet him.
He may not be there !

Thus, many people are continually settling ques-
tions that never come up. Conditions change and the is-
sue you feared never materializes. It is well to do the
best you can for today and so order your life that you
will be in good shape to meet all emergencies, but as for
conjuring up bogies and fussing over things that you
are not sure will happen — it is a waste of time.

For instance, I know a young person who upset two
households over settling the question whether or not
the two young people of those households should room
together in college, a year or so hence. It made a tre-
mendous fuss. One of them failed to get into college.
Exit — ^problem !

There is a whole lot of value in a certain form of
procrastination. I don't mean procrastination of im-
mediate duty. I urge rather the putting off of the
absolute settlement of many things until they have to
be settled. I urge this, for in reality, prompt and sen-
sible judgment is to be made only on the basis of exist-
ing circumstances, not on the basis of circumstances as
you fancy they may be at some future time. Prompt
judgment, wise dealing are best made in the conditions
of the moment, but it is not possible to settle today a
state of affairs that may exist next September. Nev-
ertheless, many people seem to think they are obliged

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 107

to attempt it. A good many times you never have to
settle it at all. It settles itself. It is like the tariff.
We have been trying to settle it for a hundred years.
Now it is settling itself on the fields of Flanders. But
don't cross bridges until you come to them.

And, too, when things are bad you ask yourself,
"What is there intolerable about this ?" Is not that a
fine line of advice for us today, considering that it
comes out of the ages. Suppose that someone had told
you five years ago that your little high school boy
would be over in France, in a mud-hole, covered with
vermin, rats running after him, knee deep in water and
shot at with poison gases and shrapnel. You simply
could not have stood the thought. Now, it is not intol-
erable, is it ?

There once was a man whose motto was "It might
have been worse." Once a friend thought he would
put this chap out of countenance. He could not do it
easily, so he went to his fancy for material. He ac-
cordingly pictured to this friend a terrible situation in
which he had found him in a dream. He had seen this
hopeful friend in hell. He was suffering every possible
torture. There was not a single loophole left for the
poor fellow. It was simply frightful. It was a dream
of terror. "Now, sir, what do you say to that?" asked
the man triumphantly. "0, it might have been worse,"
was the reply. "Worse!" echoed the man. "Worse!
how could it have been worse?" "Easily," replied the
cheerful one. "It might have been true."

That's the way with most of our troubles. They
might have been true and that would have been a lot
worse than it now is. In suffering and in sorrow it is
well to remember that we are living in the present
moment and that each moment that we pass brings us
so much the nearer to the breaking of the day when the
suffering shall have been assuaged and the sorrow have
passed away.

108 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Again, "Don't take oxx the burden of your whole life
at any one time." Under any conditions ask yourself,
"Is this absolutely intolerable ?" The answer is always
"No."

ON "CULTIVATE THE BIRDS"

T WILL add to your pleasure in life if you learn
a few specialties of the out-doors. For in-
stance, suppose you study botany, or birds, or
trees !

There is a woman in a responsible position
in a Lewiston Savings Bank of whom I am
thinking as an example. You would not know from
her casual conversation that she had recently issued a
book on the birds of Lewiston-Auburn. Her life is
broadened and made happier by her love of birds, fields
and woods. She says: "My first step in ornithology
was taken while studying botany when I heard the her-
mit thrush." She will tell you that it has made her life
quite all over; given her abiding interest in the out-
doors ; there is a fascination about it, quite overpower-
ing. She quotes Dr. Van Dyke: "I put my heart to
school, in the woods where veeries sing and brooks run
clear and cold, in the fields where the wild flowers
spring." I wish I were young again. I would learn as
much as I possibly could about the birds, the wild flow-
ers and the trees. Then I could have a share in what
John Burroughs, Henry Van Dyke, Henry D. Thoreau
and Chapman and many others have enjoyed — all hid
from me, except in a general way.

And so I envy the quiet little woman who can go out
of a summer dawn into the fields and woods just to hear
the bird-song. Every liquid note, that falls on her
ear, tells a story to her. To me they are nothing but
the sweet chorus of a dawn. To her each note tells the

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 109

story of the little singer. She sees the bird, in her
mind's eye. It is one of God's creatures singing to
Him as sings the white-throated sparrow. "O ! happi-
ness, happiness, happiness." If I could name the way-
side flowers and tell the birds by their songs, I should
feel better about it. And if I were a youth, I would not
let the opportunity pass. *T go out in the fields,"
writes Thoreau, "to see what I have caught in the traps
which I set for facts." He looked to fabricate an epit-
ome of nature — we do not attempt so much. Profes-
sor Stanton of Bates went a-field on bird-walks because
he loved the birds and because he loved God, his Father
and the Maker of all good things. Thoreau was of the
same school. "I never felt easy until I got the name
of Andropogon (a certain kind of grass). I was not
acquainted with my beautiful neighbor, but since I
knew it was the andropogon, I have felt more at home
in my native fields." The farmer who could find him
a hawk's egg or give him a fisher's foot he would wear
in his heart of hearts, whether called Jacob or not. He
saw a deep-world under foot. He believed the earth to
be kind. He preached God in the living thing — free,
full of song and full of beauty. How many times have
I quoted this passage from Thoreau which seems to me
to be perfect: "We are rained on and snowed on with
gems. What a world we live in ! Where are the jewel-
ers' shops ? There is nothing handsomer than a snow-
flake and a dew-drop. I may say that the Maker of the
world exhausts his skill with each snow-flake and dew-
drop that he sends down. We think that the one
mechanically coheres and that the other simply flows
and falls; but, in truth, they are the products of en-
thusiasm, the children of an ecstasy, finished with the
Artist's utmost skill."

And so, I am going — all along in these talks, so long
as they continue — every now and then to preach the
same sermon! Cultivate some avocation out-of-doors

110 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

in the fields, among the birds, along the brooks, within
sound of the manifold voices of God ! Do it now. This
is not a world of matter. It is not bounded by the
Hohenzollerns on the North, the Hapsburgs on the
south, the Romanoffs on the east and the Wilson-
McAdoos on the west. This is a world of spirit, beauty,
love, kindness. The resurrection is to come not out of
the reeking tube of the big Bertha, but out of the
throat of the birds and from the perfume of the fields.
I would rather be like the little woman over in the
Androscoggin County Savings Bank in Lewiston — Miss
Miller by name — with what she knows of birds, than
be a ruler with a throne, built on the bodies of those
who were innocent. For the road to happiness and
peace triumphant is to come by the way of the fields
leading smilingly to happy homes.

ON "YOU NEVER CAN TELL TILL YOU TRY"

NE DAY back in the beginning of time, a man
stood by the bank of a river. He saw the
fish a-swimming. Said he to himself, "Why
hath the Lord denied to man the right to
swim ?" And he heard a voice out of the sky
saying, "How do you know that man cannot
swim? You never can tell till you try."

And so man swam. And so man has burrowed in
mines. And so man has ventured out on the sea in
boats. And so man has made iron swim on the seas in
ships. And so he has gone down under the sea in sub-
marines. And so he has beaten the birds, flying faster
than the eagles.

It is not so much of the result as of the impulse,
that I would speak. It is of smaller importance that
man flies against the sun, than that he should believe
that nothing is impossible until proven such. It is more

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 111

to the purpose that we try than that we succeed. Fail-
ure may fortify us. We shall learn by trying. But if
we never try, we surely shall never succeed and shall
never have an average of accomplishment.

Thanks be to the Lord! The world has had cer-
tain men who have never believed in the impossible.
They saw what the world needed and set about to sup-
ply the need. Experience — which is very blind as a
rule — said : "It never has been done. There is a law of
physics that makes it impossible. You will be wasting
your time." But these men said, " I am not so sure.
You never can tell till you try." It was proven in-
contestably that men could never conquer the air.
The specific gravity of solids was such and such as com-
pared with air! The lifting power of air-planes was
such and such! The Idea! Nonsense! It could not
be done. I could find you many absolute — and obsolete
— proofs that machines never could be made that would
fly. But Prof. Langley and Wright Brothers and a
few others said, "You never can tell till you try."
And now we dip and dive in the ether like the hawk and
swallow.

If you want to read a book that will put gumption
into you in respect to trying to do things that scientists
and wise men say are impossible, read Samuel Smiles'
"Life of George Stephenson." Here was an uneducated
man. He could not read until he was mature. He
mended shoes and repaired clocks and tended the
engine at the pit-mouth in the collieries in Northum-
berland. The coals were hauled on wooden or iron
rails by horses. Stephenson believed that they could
be hauled by what we now call the locomotive. The
scientists said it was impossible. The capitalists said
it was impossible. But Geordie Stephenson said, "You
never can tell till you try." Read the story of that
life. Read how he took up the impossibles and solved
them. Read how this unlearned man actually invented

112 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the arts of locomotive-building, of railroad construc-
tion ; how he flung the iron rails over morasses ; how he
pierced mountains in deep tunnels ; how he constructed
the locomotive against parliament and the mobs of
English farmers protesting that it would blast the
crops and spread famine thru the land. It will put the
pep into you. It will make you believe — if nothing else
will make you.

How can any man today dare say that anything in
the physical world is impossible? Let him consider
the Marconi wireless, the phonograph, the Atlantic
cable, the newspaper-press, the aeroplane, the subma-
rine, the mariner's compass! With the mysterious
power of radium in the offing, who shall say that there
will not be found new fields of wonder and achievement
that today we do not glimpse, much less explore? We
are like children in a palace of illusions! What we
think are real are but appearances, what we think are
fixed laws, may be nothing of the sort. If thirty years
ago a person had told you that you would see the day
when you could photograph a man's liver thru his body,
without taking the said liver out and hanging it on a
nail, you would have said "go to." Surest thing that
ever was — "you never can tell till you try."

So if I were a boy, and looked out on the world and
saw things that the world needed — either as Edison, or
as Joan of Arc, or as Billy Sunday, or as Michelangelo,
or as Gutenberg or any other deliverer or helper
of the race, I never would say, "It can't be done."
Rather should I say, "You never can tell till you try
and I am going to TRY." And it is this spirit that is
fortifying the world today. We are doing things today
that we never knew we could do until we tried — and
all of them bringing mankind to higher levels thru
effort that purifies and uplifts.

ON "THAT'S THE BOY OF IT"

E WERE reading this from our old philoso-
pher: "Your time is almost over, therefore,
live as though you were on a mountain.
Never run into a hole or shun company."

And then the man at the other desk in the
office said, "That old Roman never went
camping out, did he?"

This accords with what is happening in my back-
yard. The boys across the way came over the other
night and asked, "Please may we put up our tent in
your back yard? We will be quiet and won't make no
noise nor nothin'."

"Go on," says I. "May you be happier than I ever
was, living in a tent". And the tent is up and I can
hear mysterious sounds from it and see boys crawling
out of it with wooden bowie-knives in their teeth and
with red paint on their faces.

There comes a time in every boy's life when he
wants to live in a tent. Nobody knows what stirring
of nomadic blood leads them to this desire. It prob-
ably dates back to pre-historic ages when our forebears
lived in tents. It is the call of the wild in the boy.
But they are sure to have it and if repressed, it does
harm. If a boy in my neighborhood wants to tent out
and will agree to do it near home, he has my consent.
Don't bother him. Let him have his fill. He will en-
joy home the better, afterward.

You remember, perhaps, when you went camping
out with some other boy. You talked about it for a
month, yea, a year. You got a tent and worked like a
little Injun to get money to have your belongings
hauled to some convenient camping ground and you
were dumped down with the world before you. A tent
averages to be the hottest place in mid-day and the
coldest place at midnight with two exceptions — hell

114 JUST TALKS ON COMMDN THEMES

and the north-pole. And it always rains. And some-
one always tells the boys to build a trench around the
camp and they do and the trench fills up and backs up
into camp and floats the bedding, and the green snakes
crawl in and the earwigs and the ants want to go camp-
ing out and the noises are something awful nights.
Every lion and tiger in the State of Maine comes prowl-
ing around and the rains are simply bitter. And the
beans sour — nice beans that you were going to fall back
on when game got scarce — and your matches get wet
and you can't seem to get along without milk and cream
and you are somewhat homesick. And the mosquitoes
are thick and you want to go home and can't, because
you were going to stay a week anyway. And you get a
cold in your head and your feet are wet and then the
man, on whose land you are camping, comes down and
asks you who in thunder ever gave you permission to
camp on his land, and asks you if that is you who has
been shooting a pistol at his cows, and tells you his
charge is ten dollars for camping privileges anyway,
and to fork over, and you have only eighty cents be-
tween you.

And your chum proves to have a bad temper and
yours is no better, and you sit there crying into the wet
pillow and you hear a voice outside and it sounds like
Dad's, and he is saying, "Here they are, Joe ;" and it IS
Dad and your chum's Dad come over to see how the
bold hunters are getting along.

"Well, boys," says Dad, "isn't this the fine place!
Just getting to feel like home, I suppose? Fixed up
nice and cosy, eh! Well! Well! This is great isn't
it, Joe ?" And they stay around a while and talk about
coming over again next week to see you. And you feel
like death until Dad says, "Of course, if you rather
come home now and come over again and have another
week some other time, say the word and we'll tote yer
home."

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 115

And two weak little voices echo, "I guess that would
be fine and dandy all right." And two happy boys
bundle into Dad's arms and sleep all the way home.
And that's the Boy of it.

ON "AUTOING WITH A CHEERFUL MAN'

E CAME up from Boothbay Harbor, Monday
morning, in an automobile with a cheerful
friend at the wheel.

It had rained the night before, in torrents.
The clouds had parted and the floor of heaven
had cracked and let all of its waters down
upon the earth. But the day dawned clear. The sun-
light was upon the earth on Monday morning, the wind
was in the West, the buttercups were bright and the
sweet-grass pelted you with perfume all along the way.
Nothing much was said about the trip until we left
Brunswick. Of course there was mud and peculiarly
sticky. And this quiet period affords opportunity to in-
troduce the cheerful friend at the wheel. Last spring
he was generally known as the Honorable Thomas
C. White, candidate for mayor of Lewiston, but now,
as in the erstwhile, we call him Tom. And it is a priv-
ilege to drive with him. If the sun happened not to be
shining, you would not miss it with him at the helm.

We came up from Brunswick by the way of South-
west Bend. We wanted to see the old pastoral lands of
the early settlers. We wanted to breathe the perfume
of the scented fields of Durham. We wanted to see
the broad domain of aboriginal life when the pioneer
came home from church with his back full of Injun ar-
rows and most of the Fitzs and the Tylers and the
Dingleys went around minus their scalp-locks. We
wanted to be out under the umbrageous — that's the

116 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

word — elms whose low-sweeping limbs should brush
our fevered brows.

But, somehow, we had not thought of Tom. And
as for "fevered brows" — well, an ordinary man would
have gotten fever not only in his brow but also in the
seat of his pants in that drive. I have mentioned that
it had rained the night before. And one of the places
that was not slighted by the rain was this stretch of
road from the frontier of Durham to the rippling
region of Garcelon's Ferry. And along here the road
which was built by the Injuns has never been inspected
since. It lies in a hollow all of the way and lovely trees
are hanging over it. Part of it is sandy ; much of it is
rocky ; all of it was afloat. Now, I would not bother to
give any account of an ordinary trip over a muddy
road, even on a sunny day. It would be commonplace.
But did you ever ride over a road like that which I have
but feebly indicated, with a driver in his own car, when
he was sunshine all the while? Did you ever see a
driver bounce up in the air out of a hidden rut, sail up
over the limb of an elm-tree, come down in his seat
right side up and grab the wheel again and never lose
a laugh? Did you ever see a driver bury the nose of
his car so far in the mud that it choked the horn, and
not hear him swear? Did you ever sit in the back of
a car and see the rain-washed road spring up at you ;
sweep up over the wind-shield in a flood, like the waves
from the prow of a battleship, and filling the driver's
eyes with muddy water, emerge amid "three cheers
and a Hooray" from the front seat! Did you ever
cross bridges where there were none and climb hills
that had been washed away, and ford running brooks
and sweep thru ponds and all of the time, the driver of
the car doing athletic stunts on the wheel that beat
the trapeze artists of the John Robinson circus?

That was Tom. And just as sunny about it as tho
it were all in the day's work. A joke here, a smile

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 117

there. A jest for the rough and a compliment for the
smooth.

My moral — Happy the man who takes the bumps
with a cheerful disposition. Blessed be he. Long life
and many of them to the cheerful man at the wheel,
wherever he may be. And live a thousand years, never
will I forget that happy day, that might so easily have
been made miserable but for Tom. And never will I
cease to praise the glorious gift of making the best of
things.

ON "TRUNDLE BEDS"

UR OLD friend, E. P. Ricker, of Poland Spring,
was in this office a few days ago, talking
about the days when they charged from $2.50
to $3.50 a week for board at the Mansion
House at Poland Spring, and he said that per-
haps it was enough, for the roof leaked and
they had only a few rooms and a good many in a room.
That was many, many years ago, when the first adver-
tisement of Poland Water appeared in the Brunswick
Telegraph, and the first circular was issued on Poland
Water.

"I remember," said Mr. Ricker, "that I was sleeping
on a trundle bed, and — "

Here is the place to stop quotation and ask a few
questions. How many of our readers ever saw a
trundle bed? How many know what a trundle bed is
and why it got its name ?

I can remember how a trundle bed looked, but I
never slept in one and we never had one in the house,
altho there was one at grandmother's house. Yet I sup-
pose a good many of our readers will remember them
and many have slept in them. They were little, low bed-

118 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

steads for children, and of tremendous economy. They
were called "trundle" because they could be trundled
about the room and because it was the custom to slip
them under the tall four-posters during the day-time
so as to be out of the way. Those were the days when
a sleeping-room was not exclusive. Few rooms, in
spite of all of the land outdoors on which to build, was
the custom ! People slept in innocence and purity, sev-
eral in a room. So when night came, out came the
trundle bed from its nice, sanitary retreat under the
family bedstead and all the household turned in, hig-
gledy-piggledy !

The old-fashioned bed was a terrible thing — come
to think of it. It is a wonder how they ever lived — our
grandfathers and grandmothers — to such ripe old age
without "influenza," and the grip, the pip and the tee-
bees. The old-fashioned four-poster was as snug as a
linen-closet in an August afternoon on the sunny side
of a house with the thermometer at a hundred and ten.
On going to bed in winter they used to warm up a bed-
pan, shut the windows, wind the clock, call in the cat,
lock the shed door, put a log on the fire, tuck in the
children, put on a flannel night-cap, get out the bed-
steps, draw the bed-curtains, climb to the level of the
bed, enter the sanctuary, sink about eleven feet into a
feather bed and, pulling the curtains close about them,
shut out any vagrant air and sink into pleasant dreams
— no doubt. Night-air was accounted noxious, on ac-
count of the carbonic acid gas let out by vegetation.
We used to hear so much about plants reversing the
order of their exhalations after dark, that we used to be
afraid of being caught out after sun-down for fear of
being poisoned. They were wary folk — those old-
timers.

But they survived it and so did the boys, sleeping in
the trundle-beds, about four inches from the floor,
where drafts ran around and the mice frolicked. To

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 119

see three large, awkward boys, anywhere from six feet
to seven feet long, inhabiting one trundle bed while pa,
marm and two or three children inhabited the four-
poster, was to see economy of space combined with
dreamless sleep. You could hear those boys growing
thru the night.

Trundle beds have gone, along with the old-fash-
ioned side^board cradle with its wooden rockers, rat-
tling a lullaby along the yellow-painted kitchen floor —
mother's toe agitating it as she knit the socks or spun
the yarn with the flying wheel. How many people have
seen a grandmother spinning in the twilight of the
evening by the firelight in an old-fashioned kitchen?
I used to see a grandmother serenely doing this and
smoking her pipe at the same time, innocently and
sweetly — sanctifying tobacco in the purity of her life
and the religion of her deep and abiding Faith. And
how many have agitated the churn — the old dasher
churn, when the butter refused to come; when good
fishing waited outside with allurement for the im-
patient boy!

Times have changed and customs, also! Other
things have gone with the trundle bed — some good,
some bad. But what abideth is memory of the dearly
beloved. We sat with them in the twilight, often, in
blessedness of love. And angels' wings brushed our
faces, tho we knew it not.

ON "PROGRESS AND WONDER"

LL THE WHILE that man fights man, in the
world-struggle, a similar drama is going on
in all animal life. Everywhere we see the
unfolding of it, struggle between mates,
struggle between rivals, and on the other
hand we see love and growth.

It makes us wonder if we even faintly see the light
in this world of wonder. If we should talk over what
we ourselves have observed about animal behavior we
would come to a common-ground of agreement that
animals live on a scale of intelligent deportment that
is, to say the least, a close resemblance to our own, and
from it should take courage for the future.

Take the wonderful thing known as migration of
birds. I have been reading in one of Prof. J. A.
Thompson's lectures about the marvels of bird migra-
tion. They almost pass belief — how they make their
long journeys at night with unabating speed ; how they
cross pathless seas ; how they return to the very garden
in which they nested the year before; how the young
birds that never migrated before, set off alone and wait
not for those who have gone before, but "change their
season in a night and wail their way from cloud to
cloud down the long wind."

Or take, as this writer says, as another instance, the
life history of the common European eel. It begins
life below the 500 fathom line on the floor of the deep
sea — in a dark, cold, calm, silent, plantless world. It
passes to the surface as a flattened larva, quite trans-
parent, and it lives in the open sea for over a year, not
eating anything and growing rather smaller as it
grows older., It becomes a young eel or elver, as it is
called, which makes for the shore and journeys up the
rivers. In spring or early summer, legions of these

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 121

elvers pass up stream, obedient to their instinct to go
right ahead as long as the light lasts. Before reaching
such rivers as flow into the Eastern Baltic, the young
eels have had a journey of fully 3,000 miles; for all of
the eels of Northern Europe seem to have had their
cradle in the Atlantic west of the Faroes, the Hebrides,
Ireland, and Spain, where the continental plateau
shelves deeply down to the great, silent depths. As
the elvers pass up the streams, there is a separation of
the sexes. The females go ahead farther up the
streams; the males lag behind. Then follows a long
period of growth in slow-flowing reaches of ponds and
rivers. After some years of this new life, they all
make the return journey to the sea and as far as is
known, the individual-life ends in giving origin to new
lives. There is never any breeding in fresh water;
there seems to be no return for any eel from the deep
sea — ^nothing but the succession of the coming elver
and the departing eel, his life finished.

And all this goes on in spite of man and his petty
wars. The impulse that sends the bird to the south
and back again in summer to the north; the impulse
that controls the migration of the European eel and all
similar impulses are apparently sempiternal. We have
as yet not the smallest conception of the ruling im-
pulses of the world. We are all too apt to consider
things solely from the standpoint of Man, and he is only
a very small part of creation and by no means the most
wonderful. The body of an ant is many times more
visibly intricate than a steam-engine. Its brain, as
Darwin said, is perhaps the most marvelous speck of
matter in the universe. Scientists say that in a tiny
organism no larger than the second hand of a watch
there is a molecular intricacy that might be repre-
sented by an Atlantic liner packed with such watches.

Now — bear this in mind as the thought of this Talk.
The word of all nature is Progress. There has never

122 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

been an instance yet of retrogression in the system.
Individuals and some types come and go — ^but the
world plan is Progress. We do not know; cannot un-
derstand as yet what is the secret of Life, what is its
destiny, but the person who sees the birds come and go,
who knows of such mysterious influences as those
which control the elver in his 3,000 mile journey to a
place unseen hitherto, but unerringly found, cannot
doubt that Man will find with the same unerring
course, the Haven — which is a Heaven, somewhere.
In the meantime let us wonder and wonder — for it is
the spur to knowledge and the staff of faith.

ON "FUSSING ABOUT THE WEATHER"

T SEEMS as tho a lot of time is wasted in fuss-
ing about the weather — especially in New
England. Many people put in a deal of time
in going about complaining that it is too hot
or too cold.

The Professor just went out. He said,
"how in timenation can you keep on working along here
in this heat. I have been home and down cellar with
an electric fan going and the longer I stayed the hotter
it got and I had to come out and get relief by seeking a
little human sympathy. DID you ever see a hotter
day?" Now it happened to be Tuesday, July 23, ther-
mometer 95 degrees Fahr. The weather had not oc-
curred to me. I was busy. If I went down cellar and
thought nothing but heat and considered nothing but
the thermometer, I might have kicked up a fever in the
blood. But what's the use ?

I hear some one say, "Oh, but if you were in a real
hot place and working like other folks, you would have
to fuss. Well — it is under the roof where I am work-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 123

ing ; and I have been thumping this typewriter steadily
since 8 a.m. and it is now 5 p.m., and there are linotype
machines across the way ; and a pot of 2,500 lbs. of hot
metal belching out heat, and no window near me and
my electric fan loaned to the proof-readers and yet I
perspire peacefully. I simply am not going to fuss
about what I can't help. If there is any philosophy
about that you are welcome to it. I have no copyright
on it.

And there is not much use in fussing about things
you cannot help. The weather comes in assortments
that sometimes are not what you would order. But I
suppose that if left to a committee of citizens to pick
out the weather, we would have more or less difficulty
in getting them to serve a second term. Jones would
want rain on his street to lay the dust and Brown would
want sunshine for his picnic, both at the same time.
Wilson would want it cool so he could mow his lawn and
Jencks would want it hot so that his corn would ripen.
My friend. Sawyer, would want a long spell of rain to
fill his dams at the head of the river, and my friend
Davis would want a long spell of dry weather so that he
could build a coffer-dam for a river improvement. I
suppose that some people would want summer in win-
ter because they are home during winters and would
want winter in summer so as to save coal.

So what is the use of fussing. Can't help it ! That
is the only decent answer as the perspiration runs and
the B. V. D. becomes a wet blanket on enjoyment. But
it can be done — as I have said before. You can per-
spire in silence and not go raving around shouting
"Gee ! Did you ever see the like of it. Thermometer
ninety-five. Hottest day of the season." You can at
least keep quiet about it and let others forget it, if they
can. You need not assert that it looks like another hot
day "termorrer." You need not insist on sweating in
other people's presence. You need not parade your
suffering and mopping.

124 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

The happiest people in a hot-spell are those who are
the busiest. The best scout of all is the chap who goes
right on and does his bit in spite of the weather. He is
a real soldier. They say that in the approach to the
battlefields it is often hot and dusty — especially dusty.
They say that sometimes it is so hot and so dusty that
men fall unconscious. But they have no thermometers
and as they do not know how hot they really are, they
do not suffer very much. They laugh and joke and
hunt cooties and drive on. The thermometer is a great
waster of time. It makes folks discontented with the
atmosphere. It induces invidious comparisons. If
we had no thermometers we should have fewer people
who felt hot in summer and cold in winter. Lots of
people never know it is cold in winter until they see the
thermometer.

Don't be a traveling thermometer.

ON "BEING THE WHOLE THING"

RE you one of those business men who think
that nobody else can do your work; that the
business would stop if you went away for a
few days? If so, mend your ways. If you
are running the business that way, it is time
for you to reorganize. No business should
be at the mercy of one man.

Here is a true story. When the United States
Steel business was re-organized and every one in Pitts-
burgh became a millionaire over night, by the forma-
tion of the gigantic United States Steel corporation, it
happened that there was a man in the open-hearth
steel plant who had been there many years and who
was a faithful and efficient boss of his expert and
highly intricate work.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 125

In the sudden down-pour of riches, the happy offi-
cials thought of this man, and, seeking to reward him
for his share in the success, they called him into the
office, gave him a lot of money and told him that he
had earned a vacation. "Go abroad a year," said they,
"Your pay will go on as before on a big advance. Look
over everything in steel-construction and steel-manu-
facture. Have a good time. Rest up and enjoy your-
self."

The man went away and stayed six months. He had
always been a worker ; never a loafer. He had been a
powerful, dominant man who attended strictly to busi-
ness every day of the year, no vacations. He became
restless, in Europe ; he could stand it no longer ; he set
sail for home and one day stepped into the main-office
of the U. S. Steel Co. and said: "How's things going?"

The manager looked up and said, "Rotten. Nobody
here knows how to make open-hearth steel as it should
be made. We have lost thousands and thousands of
dollars by your absence."

"Gimme my overalls!" shouted the happy man,
"I'm going back to work in three minutes."

"No, you are not," said the manager. "You are
going back to Europe and stay there for the rest of
your vacation. No one man is ever again going to put
the U. S. Steel Co. in the hole that you have left it in.
No man ought to run a department so that his assistant
can't run it as well as he did. The measure of a man's
efficiency in a department is results, both when he is
there and when he is not. If his assistants can do the
work better than he can, it goes to his credit ; he has
picked the men ; he has taught them. We want no seg-
regation of expertness in any one individual. In short,
the excellence of a manager, is the degree to which he
can disappear for brief seasons and return to find it
running smoothly. We do not want the U. S. Steel Co.
to shut down because, some bad day, you overeat and
die."

126 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

This does not mean that business-men are not to
attend to business. But what it does mean is that
their efforts at running business must be directed in
large affairs to man-selection and the proper apportion-
ing of responsibility upon them. Hold them for re-
sults. Stand like Foch at the guidance and depend on
men who shall have every opportunity to learn; on
them shall be, under your larger guidance, the issue of
success.

And bear this in mind, you will lose your punch if
you permit yourself to go stale. To this end, frequent
change, occasional variation of work, average number
of vacations — all these are essential. A day or two in
the open, out where bigger things than have ever devel-
oped in your factory are going on — out by the sea, or
on the mountain top — all of these are required. Put
the punch into yourself and into your assistants by con-
sideration of the human need for rest and recreation.
And don't forget that you are not — or should not be
indispensable to the degree that the business will suf-
fer if you leave your desk for a few weeks in summer.
Forget it. You are not the whole business unless the
business can do very nicely in your absence. The
system should be bigger than the individual.

ON "BEAUTY OF THE WORLD"

E have talked together — if perchance I have
any readers — about beauty, feeling as I do,
that it is deeper than the surface and a
part of a divine plan. For Beauty, as I take
it, is a foreshadowing on earth of the ulti-
mate development of mankind after death, an
earthly beatitude, expressed in form.

So Beauty is no mere accident of form and habit.
It is as a phrase in the infinite harmonies, a movement
in the song of the heavenly chorus, heard a little in
advance. It is brother to Truth and Justice, it is per-
fection, here and there, displayed. It is an echo of the
rhythm that moves in and thru all creation. The omni-
presence of beauty in all finished and normal life, must
have some meaning. Even if it signify nothing more
than that it arouses something within us that responds
pleasurably to nature — that is worth while. "Thou
hast ordered all things in measure and number and
weight ! Thou hast made all things beautiful, in their
season."

The whole world is beautiful. Its very beauty
proves that it could not have come by chance. From
the crystal to the flower, there is plan and order. The
sea beating against the shores; the wide stretches of
the fields; the azure of the skies; the rugged storm
clouds, built up against an evening sky; the gold of a
perfect sunset ; the beauty of a dawning day ; the stars
that sweep overhead at night; the moon, on summer
seas ; the mountains thrown against a dazzling sky ; the
silver tips of peaks remote, diamond-studded; the
sweep of storm thru city streets with eaves groaning
and night winds sobbing; the brooks that sing along
the forest paths ; the birds in brilliant colors — what is
all this prodigal display of perfect loveliness, but the
work of some Divine influence making this the abode of

128 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

loveliness, as tlie vestibule to glories yet to be?

And there is no common thing that hath not its
loveliness. We brush aside the common weeds, seen
so often that we do not notice them and yet, if
we take time some day, when we are sitting by
some wayside spring, to examine them, we shall find
them beautiful, intricate, full of individuality. Their
parts are perfectly correlated and well adapted to their
surroundings. They have means of protection and of
development. They are of a race perhaps older than
our own. We see the bee come to them and find his
sweet — the beautiful, golden bee adorned in colors that
do not fade. If we enter into the laboratory of the
weed, we find beauties of plan, mysteries of evolution
that fill us with awe. It is true, as the poet says,
"Little flower! If I could but understand what you
are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God
and Man is."

I do not want this loveliness to escape notice of
those who read casually the newspaper as it comes and
goes. Some things are abiding. This earth is not all
of it. Everything is wonderful if you will but observe.
*T believe that a leaf of grass is no less than the jour-
ney-work of the stars," says Walt Whitman, "and the
pismire is equally perfect; and the grain of sand and
the egg of the wren ; and a tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre
of the highest ; and the running blackberry would adorn
the parlours of heaven ; and the narrowest hinge on my
hand puts to scorn all machinery ; and the cow munch-
ing with depressed head surpasses any statue ; and the
mouse is a miracle enough to stagger sextillions of
infidels."

ON "PASTURES"

ROWN, gray, green or even white with winter
snow, what is lovelier than a Maine pasture,
with a knoll on it !

And we prefer them, do we not, with a
pine-tree on that knoll, whispering things
about strange places with the winds that
have been everywhere and seen everything. We like
them also that give glimpses of casual pond or lake so
that we can lie with our head on a stone, as Jacob did at
Bethel, and see visions, in the sky and on the shining
waters.

A Maine pasture must — simply must — be entered
by a gate with bars that let down and it should have
low juniper, granite bowlders, occasional velvety
patches, a sand-bank, and a familiar path that leads to
the heights. If it be an "institutional" pasture, so to
speak, it may have a picnic grove in it. I have such a
one in mind, called "Bibber's Woods," where a whole
town went on hot afternoons in summer and looked far
down into a valley in which a stream wound along like
a silver ribbon. The cows came up and joined us at
sunset and nobody ever left the bars down. I suppose
that the portable saw mill has murdered these living
trees before this.

I like a pasture in the spring, when ninety-nine per
cent of the snow is gone ; when the earth is quite warm
and when the mayflower is to be found. It takes the
expert to find the mayflower "down underneath,"
always in certain definite spots, remembered of last
year, among long grasses in the most hidden places,
known only to you. They are old friends. But one
does not go mayflowering if memories are too potent
and come with tears — curly-headed, fairy-like little
girl, running about here and there, your companion and
pal — now alas, too staid and sophisticated at seventeen

130 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

to go mayflowering with dad. Ah! The visions of
children with flowing hair, that people every pasture,
even those by the home fireside.

We love the pasture for its silences. The swallows
fly low over the pasture knolls, the bluebird sings upon
the fence-rail and the drowsy tinkling of the cow-bells
lulls us to dreams. One can stretch out here in the
sunshine as on his mother's bosom. The sunlight, thru
ash and poplar, filters in over our pastures of New Eng-
land as nowhere else. Mere fields are stubble ; forests
are obscure and mystic. The presence of the Lord is in
the deep woods; but out here the angels of peace and
the good fairies seem to play, and they draw light out
of the west and run with it helter-skelter over the
knolls and into the valleys. One can hardly despair in
a pasture, whatever his memories. It is too bright and
open for despair.

I like the pastures even in winter. The snow blows
over them and lays them as with a white table-cloth.
It lies in shelving ridges, with edges overhanging and
overlapped like mother of pearl in the deep sea shell.
The pines sing louder in winter. There are open tracks
of the rabbit or fox. . The snow declines to build
against the trunks of certain trees, for what reason I
do not know, and often there are bare and dry spots
where you may sit at your hazard and look abroad.
There will be a thousand things to see, from grass
culms to the lichens, glistening in the moist winter
days. Where the sun beats down you can almost see
spring stirring — yea, the infinity of springs.

Maine pastures are incomparably lovely but mostly
unappreciated. We scarcely know how rare they are.
How one hungers after them, when away from them.
Think of the weary sage-brush or the dull, dreary
stretches of the sea of corn-fields of the West. By the
side of these the Maine pasture is as elysium. And
such sunsets ! From a Maine pasture they pick up new

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 131

glories. The dull earth lends itself to emphasis of
jades and golds, and especially the upper end of the
spectrum, carmines and crimsons. As a proscenium,
even the sea is trivial and the mountain-top is melo-
drama as compared with the perfect setting of the
simple pastoral to the watcher of the skies, with pil-
lowed head upon the knoll beneath the whispering pine
as the sun sinks slowly down in glory !

No wonder the psalmist sang of them — the pas-
tures of Heaven. "He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures ; he leadeth me beside the still waters ; he re-
storeth my soul."

ON "THINKING TWICE'

NEVER did a thing in a hurry that I did not
regret it. Almost everyone has had the same
experience and, by being in a hurry, does not
mean having a quickstep, about things — it is
the mind that you must not hurry! Hurry
your feet, all you like; so long as feet or
hands do not outrun the operations of your brains. If
they do, look out. You are hurrying and must take
your chances of accident.

I am tending a furnace. It is not a job that I went
into the primaries to get. I did not go about telling
what an all-fired good furnace-tender I was and am. I
fell into the office by a fancied fitness for it on the part
of my wife. She decided that here was an office for
which I was just about suited and she elected me by a
majority of one vote, my vote "contrary-minded" not
counting.

The other night, I decided that the water was low
in the boiler and that I would fill it. This steam-plant
is a new one to me. We had not been properly intro-

132 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

duced. I found the right wheel to turn and turned it
and went about my other business of piling in the coal
and then I took out a lead pencil and sat on a barrel
and began to write a little thing that came into my
noddle, and then I went out and got an ash-barrel, and
then I went up-stairs and forgot all about the wheel
that I had turned and all about the water that was run-
ning into the boiler, by a one-inch pipe.

You see I have not hurried, up to this point. To be
sure, I worked a little ahead of my brain, but then I
was not hurrying. My brain simply was failing to
register. It needed a new needle or a fresh record or
the crank needed to be wound up. Nobody's fault, as
yet.

I ate my supper and dawdled. I went down to the
public library and got a couple of books on Freedom of
the Seas — forgetting the freedom of the water running
all of the while into my boiler — I should say, rather,
into the boiler up to the house, for, if it had been my
very own boiler, I should have noticed it. I went home
and sat down by the radiator. Then I heard a sound !
A sizzling. Then! Oh, then, I began to hurry.

Now, if I had not hurried; if I had stopped and
mopped my brow and recited a few verses of Omar ; and
drawn up a definite plan of procedure in case of flood,
it would have been all right. But as a matter of fact, I
sky-hooted for the cellar as tho a yaller dog (one of Al
Sweet's) — had had me in a place where I could not fail
to notice. It was an instant's work to shut off the
water. I had no plan. The water was oozing out of
the joints. The fire was beautiful — best fire for weeks.

Now, if my mind had not hurried in the first place ;
if I had enjoyed the confidence of a professional, I
would have known where the pipe was, for drawing off
the water. I did not. I had hurried my job. My
feet and hands had outrun my brain and my self-con-
ceit had outrun both. I accordingly turned a valve in

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 133

a pipe, hitherto considered useless, and out of it
streamed a yard of boiling water. After that, all is a
dream. I drenched in steam; boiled in water and
stewed in self-abnegation. Then the dammed pipe —
please notice that this is not swearing — ceased to run.
I bailed the cellar out and it was eleven o'clock and no
sign of the recession of water in the glass. It still
showed chock-full.

Then I did something again in a hurry. It was
awful. I took a stilson wrench and took off the pet-
cock on the water level to make a bigger flow of water.
You don't know what I did! Neither do I, now. But
the minute I did it and the water and steam began to
roar and the water rose on the floor and I began to run
to and fro leaping to the fray with water buckets of
scalding water, which I poured on the lawn, I knew
that I had hurried. For how in the name of Jupiter
Pluvius, Boiling Hot, was I ever to get the pet-cock
back. If allowed to run it would empty the entire
boiler; we should all be blown sky-high. And I could
not put in a threaded screw against four pounds of
red-hot steam and forty pounds boiling-water pres-
sure. I prayed! And the water sprayed also. My
feet were boiled. My brain was stewed. My hands
were parboiled. My wits were a ragout.

Here is my point. I took two minutes off for con-
sultation with my laggard mind. I called it back into
my presence — presence of mind, antidote for being in
a hurry, otherwise being rattled. "The hair of the dog
is good for the bite," says I; 'T will give her cold
water." I did. The pipe from the cold ran into the
hot at a juiiction-point; the water ran cold out of the
fool vent that I had made; I attacked it with the pet-
cock and the etilson.

I draw the veil over the struggle. That water,
eighty pound pressure, took me in the mouth, the ears,
up my sleeves, thru the waistcoat, out of the small of

134 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

my back, thru my liver and into my Spanish Influenza.
I was Noah with no ark. There was only one comfort ;
my wife did not see it. But I conquered just before
sinking into a watery grave.

MORAL : Think twice before you start anything.

ON "THE WAYSIDE LILY"

S YOU go upon the streets on an August day,
or pass by train thru the towns between Lew-
iston and Brunswick, you see boys with
masses of pond-lilies — the loveliest of water-
flowers, ivory, with hearts of gold, finer than
the goldsmith ever fashioned.
Often from the train window, you may see the place
whence these flowers come. They lie, white in the morn-
ing sun and glistening with the dew, along the river
bank, in the Androscoggin River, at Lisbon Falls.

How many people know that these flowers were
placed in the river by Edward Plummer of Lisbon
Falls, who was a big man in his day and who presum-
ably had "too much business" to bother with "flowers"?
He built railroads ; ran lumbering operations on the Big
River; handled crews of men all the way from the
Magalloway to the boom at Lisbon Falls ; did a big saw-
mill business and was a dreamer also, conceiving and
pushing thru the railroad into the heart of the lumber-
regions of the Rangeleys, years and years ago.

Mr. Plummer brought the roots of these lilies down
home from distant ponds and put them in good ground
in the placid waters by the shore. And there they have
grown and multiplied and now they gem the green
shores of the stream and lie out there in all the glory
of God's own beauty — the suggestion of the utility of
perfume and of loveliness.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 135

We perpetuate our names oftener by the acts of
thoughtfulness for those who are to come after us,
than in any other way. The man who plants elms by
his roadway is of the same school as Mr. Plummer.
These men do not expect to be remembered but some-
one sits some day grateful in their shade ; looks up thru
the branches, hears the birds sing and sees them nest-
ing in the branches, and he breathes a prayer for the
soul of the man who planted the tiny tree. Perhaps the
prayer and blessing reach farther on the way to the
throne, than prayers bought and paid for in coin, less
enduring than the lilies of the placid stream and the
leaves of the spreading elm.

You recall, somewhere, the wayside spring. You
stop to lave in its cool waters or drink from its running
stream. Someone put the bed of the spring there and
welled it for your refreshment. The birds come and
drink. The wayside dog laps at the rivulet that runs
thru the dusty road away from the shade that follows
the running water. All nature gives thanks. Do these
fail to reach the throne? Does the little child that
buries his face in the perfume of the pond-lily ever for-
get it ? And long years after, possibly, may he not be
stirred to some childhood memory and some return to
the simpler things of innocence and virtue by the influ-
ence of the flower ?

This is not all bunkum — I believe. The good Lord
made flowers and running waters and brooks and trees
to have their sway over human lives. Here and there
a man lives, who feels these things and practices the
religion of service to others in the simpler way. He
leaves behind him, not alone memorials of the material
things of life, — stocks, bonds, factories and automo-
biles— but even things that go on living after he has
gone. The grove of pines that he has saved from the
portable mill and deeded to the town in perpetuity,
where tired mothers may go in the hot afternoon and

136 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

there, with their children beside them in safety, find
the rest and comfort that otherwise might be denied
them ; the play-ground of the boys ; the old brook that
weaves so closely into memory after the weary years
have fled.

And so the pond-lily that the boys sell on the
streets, suggests all this and much more which you
may add of your own reflection, with the single thought
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

ON "TABLE MANNERS'

EARS ago it was good form to eat with your
knife. And there was a reason. It was a
long advance on the etiquette that insisted
that "fingers were made before forks."

It never seems to old-fashioned folk that
the indictment of the table-knife as a food-
freighter was well-taken. It was no mean accomplish-
ment to "eat with the knife." It took dexterity, for in-
stance, to eat peas with an old-fashioned steel table-
knife, and a technical aptitude at it was as diflScult as
playing the piano. Most of my gray-haired readers —
if I have any left — recall men who had a knife-tech-
nique that was swift, sure, accurate and profound. It
always seemed cruel, to their presence, to insist upon
change of style. Nothing was more beautiful than to
see a full load of food balanced on a knife in mid-air,
halted on its way to doom while the artist delayed a bit,
to discuss with another kindred soul, similarly halting,
S'lch profound subjects as "The Immortality of the
Soul" or the details of Predestination. There were
men in those days who could even gesture with a knife-
load and never spill a bean.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 137

But they have mostly gone, those old experts. The
few that exist are called sword-swallowers and are
either ostracised altogether or are eating at the second
table. The same thing has happened to those who
drink out of their saucers and go to table in their shirt
sleeves and drink out of the finger bowls. Years ago,
it was not simply permissible to drink out of the
"sasser" — it was an accomplishment. To see a man
pour his tea into his saucer and cool it off and then lift
it with firm touch and sip it with a long, soothing,
sibilant, gurgling, fugue-like cadence that could be
heard in the next county, was to see and hear the
proper thing. The louder noise he could make, the
more desirable dinner-guest he was considered. If he
wanted to do a little fin-de-siecle flourish, he dipped his
gingerbread in the tea in his saucer and then played a
solo in double-bass with it thru his mustache. And
then if he were a true artist and could wipe his mus-
tache on his coat sleeve daintily — daintily, mark you —
without the slightest suggestion of coarseness but with
that infinite considerateness that betokens the saving
of napkins, he was worth while; for napkins were
rarely given out except to the minister.

I do not think much has been gained by lowering
the napkin from the chin to the base of the stomach.
A bishop who wears a raw-silk apron was asked at a
dinner party where I once was, "What has most im-
pressed you since you became a bishop?" "Madam,"
he replied, "the one thing that has most impressed me
since becoming a bishop is the ease with which my nap-
kin slips out of my lap." All of these things have
merely taken the freedom out of feeding. It only
amounts to a greater hardship when by travel or
adversity or return to frontier conditions, one has to
eat as men eat in the raw. Of course we have pro-
gressed in table manners in some respect, since the
days when the person who could reach farthest, fared

138 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

best, — ^but not in all respects. The best table manner is
happiness, and it is to be doubted if we are getting any
more of that than we did in the old days when there
was less restraint and more fun. Laugh, joke, have
fun and frolic — that is the best table manner. A sol-
emn butler is guaranteed to give the average man
angina pectoris at the age of fifty. There is no ner-
vous dyspepsia where there is good humor, no talk of
business, no silences, no bickerings between husband
and wife, no repression of the natural sport of child-
hood, no fault-finding over food.

I do not deprecate dainty eating. But it makes
little difference which fork a man uses for spearing his
oysters. Table-manners are matters of passing fash-
ion. Neatness, clean-washed faces, clean apparel and
common decency with happiness go further than much
flummididdle and many folderols. And best of all — is
enlightening and diverting talk. Give us that and —
dear stranger coming to dine with me — you may eat
with your knife and sip from your saucer, so long as
you do it as to the table-manner born.

ON "FRACTIONS HERE AND THERE"

HERE is just one little red-cheeked, lovable
girl, eight years old, over against me, and our
heads are very close together, for she is
studying fractions,

Eheu, fugaces labuntur anni! Dear old
Horace ! The years passed no doubt, swiftly
away by the side of the cool waters of the Digentia in
his Sabine Hills, but not more swiftly than to one who
sits with a girl of two -braids of chestnut hair, conning
fractions once again.

Are we in the twilight all together, friends tonight !
And do we whose hair is whitened, — others may have
no interest in this evening's talk — consider the days

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 139

when "the rule of three perplexes me and fractions
drive me mad." Did you ever go to a little red-school-
house ? Did you ever go to a schoolhouse that had any
paint on it whatever ? Did you ever see the stove fun-
nel get red-hot? Did you ever see the late afternoon
shadows lengthen on the blackboard and the sun's last
rays shine on the very problem that you missed on?
And was that not a fraction ? There is a boy over in the
back seat there. Do you know him ? He has hair that
sticks up desperately over his head. He has a suit of
clothes that is reminiscent of the Civil War. He has
warts — mention them not. He has freckles — gold-be-
spattered spangles of out-door life. He has cow-hide
boots. He is scratching on a slate. His face is working
into weird contortions. You do not know him. You
never can know him. He was a part of you and yet is
no more. He was of you and with you and you with
him; but he has gone, with the passing years. You
lived in him and of him — you know not how — ^but O ! so
different. You lived with him as a Conqueror! A
Prince of the Realm ; a Leader of Armies ; the Greatest
Baseball Pitcher; Proprietor of a Candy Shop; Presi-
dent of the United States ; the King of Sleuths ; Daniel
Boone and Nick Whiffles. Is that little lad your
Fraction or are you his Fraction?

Fractions are proper, improper, even vulgar.
Which are you? You owed something to that little
boy — who has gone with Horace's fleeting years. Do
you dare to go up to that little boy in the back seat
there studying fractions and whisper your name into
his ear and tell him how you have turned out in the
process of reducing life to the common denominator of
manhood? Can you take him on your knee — your
earlier self — with all those dreams, hopes and fancies
of boyhood greatness and tell him that, all in all, you
have done your best, lived straight; done your addi-
tions and your divisions according to rule? Can you

140 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

truthfully say that, such as you are, you have been fair
to the little boy and his dreams and that the only
trouble was that his dreams were too big for you to
accomplish, because there are but few places nowadays
for Napoleons ?

My little girl over opposite me cannot quite under-
stand why we cannot add a fourth and a fifth together
without making them twentieths, especially as I trans-
late all fractions into mince-pie. But she will some
day. She will learn that, in the great problem of the
world, it is necessary in adding this fraction of a
human being to that, this fourth part of a proper man
or woman to that fifth part of a proper man or woman,
we must reduce them to the common denominator of
the human soul. She will know that when we try to
add one Kaiser to four social democrats, it will be nec-
essary to find out how much Man there is in each of
them. Only when she does this will she know what
the answer to the problem may be. She cannot under-
stand yet why, if you multiply the denominator and get
a bigger figure, the fraction grows smaller.

But she will — some day when she sees a man who
makes his denominator hoarded dollars — wrung from
people, sneaked out of circulation and beneficence just
to make a big bank-balance. She will see how by multi-
plying his denominator, the fraction of this man be-
comes smaller and smaller.

Dear little girl of two braids ! Life has everything
— ^fractions, units, mixed numbers, proportions; ques-
tions and answers for you — all waiting. For us whose
hair is white with years most of the answers are writ-
ten— all but One !

ON "KEEPING A DOG"

T IS according to how you accent the verb. If
you really want to keep a dog, why you prob-
ably can, provided he is the kind of a dog that
you can keep. Some dogs just wander off,
and then you are in luck unless your wife in-
sists on offering a reward. Then you will
get your dog back and usually two or three more. A
dog has his times and seasons for wandering. Maybe
ha is off after a bone. I had a dog once — a woolly-eared
dog that bit the legs of all thin people, under the im-
pression, as I always believed, that they were animated
bones. It was lucky that the dog died, before short
skirts came. Long skirts cover a multitude of bones.
This dog of mine disliked the gas man and the man
who came to take our electric-light meter. He bit
them regularly — or irregularly; I mean that he bit
them regularly as they came and irregularly as to place.
Ha was an intelligent dog and seemed to appreciate his
duty to me. Even tho mistaken in his methods, he
plainly sought to relieve me of apparent burdens due to
gas-bills and electric light bills. If I had had two dogs,
like him, I might have had one of them biting at the
back door and one at the front. As it was, well, the
dog wasted a good many of his bites.

It is easier to keep two dogs than it is to keep one.
You do not miss one of them when he is away and you
are not running around hunting for a dog. And hunt-
ing for a restless dog is a man's job. The dog may be
here now and the next hour, he may be there. It would
take two motor-cycles and a side-car, to keep run of
some dogs. So, if you can arrange it so that by having
several dogs, you don't miss one or two of them when
they fail to come around after their meals, you will get
along better.

142 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Remarks about a dog ruined Pudd'nhead Wilson.
Said he, "If I owned half of that dog, I would kill my
half." How could a man own half of a dog and if he
did, which half would he own? And if he killed half
of a dog, wouldn't he be killing the other half, too, and
what good is half of a dog, any way? He's a darned
fool," said the people of the country village, "a reg'lar
pudd'nhead."

Of course there is something about a dog that steals
into your affection. If you have a real dog it is always
a question of whether you own the dog or he owns you.
He comes into the house and muddies the rugs and
brings in his strange out-of-door suggestions and all of
the sand in the vicinity and occasional beef-livers and
odds and ends of neighbors' apparel and a few rare
insects, but when he snuggles up and puts his nose in
your hand and looks up with loving brown eyes, you
rather like him. My dog had a fondness for collecting
things. His specialty was goloshes. He would bring
me home an odd overshoe about once a week. He found
them on door-steps. I tried to train him to bring me
home a pair of them — even practiced with him in
teaching him to take up two at once. But he never
seamed to get the idea. That is where Pudd'nhead
Wilson comes in. I would have liked to have killed
that half of my dog. What I wanted was a two-over-
shoe dog, if I was going to have any.

Some day, some one will invent a dog that will be
a satisfactory house dog. I never saw one yet; but
there will be one, when we have everything safe for
democracy and dogocracy. I feel it in my bones.
That dog will never wander from home; he will not
bark at neighbors' automobiles; he will not engage in
rough fights ; he will not kill chickens ; he will not catch
the mange ; hfe will not bite telephone men ; he will not
have fits ; he will not come in dripping wet and leap in
the lady's lap; he will not steal out of the pantry; he

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 143

will not dig up the front lawn ; he will not dig up neigh-
bors' front lawns; he will not howl when the church
bell rings ; he will not bury beef -bones behind the par-
lor sofa; he will not disseminate fleas among the chil-
dren; he will not go away with pedlers. Apart from
the few imperfections, a dog is all right now. But
when McAdoo has more time, we want him and Sam
Gompers to take up the matter of the dog and make
him so that any man will as soon have an automobile
as try to keep a dog.

ON "MAN'S NECKTIES"

NECKTIE is a thing of beauty on the bosom of
a man.

I am wrong and will begin again — a neck-
tie is a butterfly under a man's chin. On
thinking the definition over carefully, it yet
seems open to criticism — ^there are few white
butterflies and almost none that are black. A necktie
is a tie for a man's neck. Let it go at that ; only it is
not for his neck, at all. It is for his shirt-front and
his neck sticks up above it, like a sore thumb out of a
bandage, and his Adam's apple wears the nap off of it
and there is no real connection between a necktie and a
neck except certain neighborly proximity. And you
can't tie a man's neck. You can only tie his collar.
As well call a "collar button" a neck-button as call a
collar-tie a necktie.

Adam wore no necktie. If for no other reason than
this, he should have been happy and left forbidden
fruit alone. When Adam got up in the morning — ^why
there he was ! You see. No collar-button to hunt for ;
no necktie to select. And then, too, Adam did NOT
have to hunt to find whether his union suit was inside

144 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

or out. A large sign should be printed on the seat of
each union suit, "This side up with Care." There is
nothing more sad in modern life than the way union
suits behave in the night. You take them off and lay
them carefully away right side up. And in the night
they squirm around and turn themselves inside out. I
have gotten up suddenly in the night and caught them
at it.

I have been studying the life of Abraham lately.
I wonder if he wore a necktie. None of his pictures
show him as such. Noah wore a blouse open at the
back. In all of the pictures I have seen, Noah gives
evidence of having had to be hooked up by his wife
every morning. I suppose he adopted this kind of a
costume for purposes of natatorial exercises in case the
ark sprung a leak.

There is no evidence of the time when the necktie
came into vigorous fashion. Have you looked at a pic-
ture of G. Washington lately? Do you know what
kind of necktie he wore ? Well, I will tell you. I have
before me the pictures of the first seven Presidents of
the United States. Every one of them wore either a
white shirt and white stock or else a high dickey and
a black stock. Not one of them yielded to the plea of
the haberdasher, "Here is something new in a beauti-
ful crushed strawberry effect." Old Hickory's collar
came up above his ears and he wore black stock enough
to clothe a High School girl of today for three years —
all except her boots.

There is no question today that if the same freedom
can be secured in everything else as there is in selection
of one's necktie, the world is going to be very safe for
democracy which will be just as varied as neckties.
There is nothing now, no law whatever — ^to prevent a
red-headed tnan from wearing a red and green necktie.
In fact, they generally do. Gamblers are now perfectly
free to wear long, flowing white string ties; like

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 145

William Jennings Bryan, who is equally at home in a
black string tie. No statesman except Ham Lewis
would think of wearing anything but a black string tie.
I notice that both of our Maine senators have taken
to them like ducks to water. A real old-fashioned
dyed-in-the-wool, back-to-the-people statesman like Joe
Cannon, wears a little black bow tie, ready-made, that
goes on with an elastic and tucks under a paper collar —
a very neat style never wholly effaced. Woodrow
Wilson usually wears a black four-in-hand ; that is pro-
fessional. Ministerial gentlemen used to wear white
neckties. They passed on save in a few wayside
pulpits with the Prince Albert coat and the high hat.
There was a time when a man would not have known
if he really had religion without a white necktie.

It is odd that George Creel and Secretary Baker and
Hoover have not as yet indicated what we are to do
about neckties. We do not really need them. We
could wear our old socks in place of them. Think it
over, Hoover. They are pure waste!

ON "MAKING AN IMPRESSION"

GOOD many years ago I went fishing at
Moosehead Lake with Seth Chandler, later
Mayor of Lewiston. We visited Jim Ham on
North Bay, a remote farmhouse with no
roads approaching it within many miles, and
reached only over the highway of the bound-
ing seas, in the then omnipresent birch canoe. Jim
had carved his homestead out of the deep woods and in
a field of blackened stumps raised corn, wheat, pota-
toes, and strawberries, so big that, as he used to say,
he had to "have a cant-dog to turn 'em over so that
they would ripen on both sides."

146 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

One virgin mom we poked the nose of our canoe —
my first mile in any canoe — into the nose of Duck Cove
and there, under the dry-ki, we saw more trout than I
ever saw before or since, a wiggling mass of "black
backs," feeding unmolested. Jim threw in the old
line, tied to an alder pole and began "derrickin' 'em
out," throwing trout thirty feet over his head and
shouting at the top of his voice, "the trouts is a
climbin' of the trees."

Such a day! A happy, hearty day with a weary
ending as at night, tired and happy with unaccustomed
labor and adventure, we came home to the little frame
house standing all alone in the clearing. We expected
to see only the familiar household, but not so ! In the
Moosehead country, in those days, "company" was
company and must be seen and heard, and so, by some
mysterious telegraphy out of nowhere, the friends of
Jim and his dear, sweet wife had gathered to see the
visitors. There were Hams from far and near; from
Dover and Foxcroft; from Seboomook and Socatean;
from Greenville and Kineo, sons and daughters, sons-
in-law and sisters-in-law and a great supper in the old
kitchen which was also sitting room and parlor.

I slept that night in the "spare room," altho of
course it was not "spare" at all, being constantly in use
and the Lord knows whom I pre-empted. It was on the
ground floor, right off the kitchen, the door of thin pine
opening outward, as happens to be of importance in this
recital. I was to room alone, a remarkable considera-
tion, for, as I looked back into the kitchen and saw all
the Hams sitting there smoking or knitting, I won-
dered what necromancy of figures could accommodate
so many in so few rooms in so tiny a house on so great
a pond.

I shall never forget that bed-time — ^my introduction
to the mysteries of a night by the greatest of all our
inland lakes. There was a distant throb in the world.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 147

It seemed to sound like the sibilant breathing of the
great soul of the Moosehead country. I noticed it as I
took off my boots — a sort of throbbing and rustling as
of Pan, the great god. I noticed it as I further dis-
robed, in manner not to be detailed. I noticed it as I
stood there in the cold, sharp air of May-time, in my
night shirt; for those were pre-pajama days. I no-
ticed it as I gazed out of the window on the star-lit
night. I noticed, too, that it did not seem all to be out
of doors. Some of it seemed to come from under the
bed. It was a low, ghostly sort of sound. It sort of
rustled and guttered like a slithering It. The odor of
it was prehistoric, methought. I would investigate,
and I did. Taking the tallow candle in my hand, I
softly lifted the bed-valance and peered beneath. I
saw IT ; IT saw me. With a leap there bounded forth
with one almighty growl about 48 pounds of gray and
white dog — wild to strangers and especially to me at
that moment, and I leaped, three paces in advance, for
the kitchen, where sat Jim and his wife and Frank and
his best girl, and Ernest and his sister, and two neigh-
bors and their families of bashful, bouncing daughters
from over Kineo way and a few social callers from
Greenville, forty miles down the lake.

My entree into the Ham circle is still told in Piscata-
quis county. There may be more sudden things than
the unannounced entree of the star visitor with fifty
pounds of dog hanging to his shirt-tail, but in a quiet
and ordinarily calm circle, such a thing may pass as an
epoch. "My God !" said Mother Ham as she raised her
hands, fell backwards in her old rocker and went heels
up, in a most unladylike position. "Hi, Bose!
Goddlemighty !" yelled Jim, as he grabbed at the dog.
I leaped over the prostrate form of Mrs. Ham and
landed in the arms of Frank's best girl. As I flew, the
dog waved behind me like the starry flag on a nor'west
wind, and as he went along, he took my shirt.

148 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I suppose that, right here, we ought to draw the
veil, but they were wearing nightshirts short in those
days and there wasn't any veil except what the dog had
and I did not feel competent to regain it. So I buried
myself in the voluminous folds of Frank's best girl's
gown until Mrs. Ham recovered her equilibrium and
threw a bed-quilt over me, enabling me to make apolo-
gies and compliments to the ladies and to retire.

I came home and wrote this story for the newspa-
per, thirty-five years ago, in which, as I recall it, I re-
marked that we had been most cordially and warmly
received at the Ham Farm and that all of them, the
ladies included, united in saying that they could not
see too much of me.

It is my opinion that if you are going to make an
impression, it is best to make a good one. This is one
of mine.

WHAT THIS DAY REALLY MEANS

Victory Day, November 11, 1918.

HE END of the war!

The German Empire, proclaimed for world
domination three generations ago, has fallen.
Instead of majestic triumphs along Unter
den Linden, with captives drawn at the
chariot wheels of the Hun, we see the Hohen-
zollerns fleeing to the shelter of neutral land in far
deeper ignominy than ever fled Napoleon. A German
Commune, like that which swept with anarchy and
rapine thru the streets of Paris nearly fifty years ago,
carries the red flag today in Berlin. We are living
years in a day. And along the streets of this Free
People of America, the sounds of rejoicing are heard
on every hand.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 149

The breakdown of German autocracy, the end of this
gigantic world-war ; the flight of the Imperial Hohen-
zollerns to realms altogether "in the Dutch" are events
of staggering significance. But these are not the
whole of it. To us, the events of the day and hour
carry a far deeper significance in the things that abide
with the Almighty God.

Every person who knows anything about the funda-
mental philosophy and religion of Germany, knows
well that from the days of Ferdinand Christian Bauer,
down to the latest expositor, there has been a relent-
less effort in Germany to rob the Bible of all its super-
natural and spiritual suggestion. God has been driven
not only from the temples, but also from the schools,
the homes, the hearts, of the people, so far as autoc-
racy could do it.

In its place, has been put the gigantic Superman
superstition of Nietsche, Trietshke and Bernhardi.
Haeckel and Von Hartmann, and scores of smaller skep-
tics and agnostics have preached their odious doctrines
of materialism and boldy asserted that any means was
justifiable in the attainment of the world-dominion of
Germany. Such horrid doctrine did the eminent Ger-
man preacher. Pastor W. Lehmann, proclaim to a great
congregation — that "Tho it may sound proud, yet will I
say that the German soul is God's ; it shall rule over all
mankind."

It is this ogre, this blasphemous and debasing trav-
esty on Christianity, that has fallen. It was time.
An impious philosophy, married to efficiency, had
reared a hellish brood. These, also, have been driven
out of Germany in this amazing debacle. To us, the
spiritual vandalism, resulting from the emasculation
of God ; the Germanizing of Christ and the consequent
Godlessness of the ruling element of German Nation-
alism, are of far deeper significance than the Kaiser's
personality. Hands dripping with blood of Belgium
as they hide the pitiable face of the Hohenzollern,

150 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

fleeing from the throne of his fathers, are not more
stained than those which pointed the way of blood
from the pulpits or set the lessons of impious atheistic
teachings before little children in a happy land. They
deliberately robbed the German people of a living God
and in His place set up a German god, soulless, military,
lustful of power. "The German soul is God's ; it shall
rule over mankind."

And so we say — it is not alone a tyranny over the
political welfare of a people that falls today. It is the
tyranny over thought, pure aspiration, and the
sweet and precious belief in the Sermon on the Mount,
that falls with the ruins of that mighty political
empire. Democracy is henceforth to be determined
not in the currency of Nietsche but in that of Saint
Paul. Human brotherhood is to be defined, not by a
God with a German soul, but by a God who is a univer-
sal Father as expressed by Him who died on Calvary.
No longer shall a nation teach from its pulpits its own
exclusive partnership with a merciless God and a lust-
ful Savior. The eyes of the German people are today
opened. The fraud is exposed. The superstition of
the Superman is dead. The German people themselves
see it today — else why did God forsake them in battle ?
A false philosophy, the most dangerous and pernicious
ev^r conceived since the beginning of man, has met its
end. Had it persisted, the world would have been en-
slaved; Faith would have died; Christ would have be-
come a myth and God a soulless mockery — the mask of
a German ego, conceived in lust and born amid slavery
and murder.

Celebrate! There never was a day like it before
since Earth began to turn within the realm of space!
It is the restoration of Brotherhood ! It is the attesta-
tion of God's loving care! It is the apotheosis of
human happiness. They must be celebrating it in
Heaven !

ON "A CERTAIN FORM OF LAZINESS"

HEN I was a boy, my mother used to say to me,
"What in the world are you doing? I never
saw so lazy a boy in all my life. You just sit
and sit and sit, doing nothing."

And I would say, "I am not doing nothing.
Fm at work. I'm thinkin'."
I believe there was some philosophy in my remark,
altho at the time it was made, I rather think that it
was an evasion. There was philosophy in it because
boys all need time to be lazy. They have a right to lie
in the sand, wiggle their bare toes, look at the clouds in
wonder and merge their souls in the infinite. You don't
really understand boys if you think they are made for
nothing but to lug in wood; tote well-water; lug out
ashes and study books. They need time to get ac-
quainted with a boy's world.

You don't understand boys very well if you forget
that they have problems. You don't understand them
if you think that they are not obliged in the nature of
things to get a basis on which, later in life, to do busi-
ness as men. There is a regular course thru which
boys have to go. They have to loaf a lot. They have
to fish. They have to roam the woods searching for
acorns and beechnuts. They have to trap squirrels.
They have to build snow-forts. They have to fight a
lot. They have to set up stores for sale of household
necessities at heavy loss. They have to give shows in
the barn. They have to speculate in taws. They have
to play hookey. They have to go camping-out. They
have to keep rabbits. They have to own a dog. They
have to swim, a lot. They have to play certain games.
They have to do all these things and a lot more in order
to fulfill a boy's destiny. And it is wrong to deny
them these things. And they have to think a lot,
lazily and idly, and their thoughts are as full of wonder

152 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

and mystery as are yours, 0 philosopher and pedant,
wondering beneath the stars — in the face of the
Infinite !

Laziness is not an absolute sin. At most it is nega-
tive badness and often it is nothing but a panacea for
the wounded nerves. Boys have nerves. They have
awful attacks of them. You just don't know a boy if
you can't make allowance for his nerves. He comes
home all tired out with school. He works like a little
beaver at lessons. His tight little nervous system is
all frayed out. You better look out and give him room
to compose himself. Give him leeway to be lazy. Give
him right of way in which to do nothing. He will live
longer and grow bigger and develop more if you let him
lie around and forget that he has any chores to do.
Let him "think."

The greatest trouble in the world is that too many
people try to run us. They won't let us alone. Boys
ought to be encouraged to think so many hours a day.
There should be lessons in observation in every school.
Boys should be made to tell the teachers what they
have observed, every day. Lessons out of books are
not much good. It is what a boy has seen and knows
by personal observation. It was this that made Audu-
bon the great naturalist. It was this that made Lin-
coln a great statesman. A great many people said
that Thoreau was the laziest man in Massachusetts.
He did act that way. He was too lazy, almost, to keep
food in the cupboard sufficient for the next meal. But
he was all the while making himself the classic-author
of American literature — the poet-naturalist of the
world.

Don't give up the habit of boyhood. Take a little
time every day to stop and think. Consider the heav-
ens, how manifold ; consider the fields and forests ; con-
sider man in the image of God; consider thyself. If
you spend all of your time doing chores, what are you ?

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 153

you s;
lestiny
you become?

But if you spend a portion of your time considering
your destiny and your opportunities, what may not

ON "SAM AS CHAUFFEUR"

AM isn't a real chauifeur. He has a license
that gives him the right to drive himself
around, but it gives him no right to drive me.
He may make a good driver sometime — ^but
now he is in the deferred class. He is even
exempt, so far as I am concerned.
He drove me over to Island Park one August day to
hear the Governor make a speech. He drove some of
the way with one hand — just to show that it can be
done. Maybe it can. I rode once to Boston with an
expert who took a notion every now and then to cool
himself off by standing on the running board, steering
with one hand and running gaily along at about forty
miles an hour. I did not understand his reasons at
first, I thought it was being done to correct the mixture
in the carburetor. When I discovered that it was
merely for the man's comfort, I told him to buy ice.

I have never driven a motor car and never shall.
It seems useless to go to all of the trouble to maim
yourself when you can hire it done. I am told that
there is an exhilaration about driving your own car.
There is exhilaration enough for me, riding with Sam.
He is the only man I know who can get thirty miles
an hour out of a car with the emergency brake on, all
the while. Sam says that after a few experiences in
driving at high speed, with the emergency smoking,
with powerful odor in the rear, you get the experience
that makes it impossible for you to repeat the mistake.
He is probably right about the matter ; all one cares to
know is how many experiences constitute "a few."

154 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

When we left Island Park, there was a large crowd
to see us get out from under a spruce tree, turn around,
escape the Ivw borders of the sedgy Lake Cobbossee-
contee, get into the narrow roadway and cross a very
] arrow bridge. Sam has a great many personal critics.
He is a populai- parson and popular persons always
attract attention when starting out on a new career.
This was a new career for Sam. He jumped into his
driver's seat and turned on the juice. Then he backed
us up to an angle of 85 per cent perpendicular and the
Attorney General and a Congressman's private secre-
tary fell into the floor of the tonneau. Then he de-
stroyed a flower bed. Then he dug up the private lawn
of a summer cottage. Then he tore up a tulip tree.
Then he pawed around with the non-skids and hit a
garden of summer squash. We would have gotten out,
but we were too busy destroying things and flying right
and left, like Peter Rabbit in escaping from Mr.
McGregor. Then, too, we were tangled up in the bot-
tom of the car. I never was so intimate with lawyers
before in my life.

By this time that peculiar phenomenon that always
takes hold of chauffeurs sometime or other, took hold
of Sam. He was violently attacked with speed mania.
Brooking no restraint — and I accent the brook — he
dashed with lightning-like speed for Cobbossee. The
light of conquest was in his eye. He was like a Poilu
going "over the top" — all but his whiskers. He
whistled a mad tune between his clenched teeth and
with the rear of the automobile decorated with red
salvia, rubber-plants, summer squash, and tulip tree,
he buried the nose of the car in among the cow-slips of
Cobbosseecontee and, then, — he released the emer-
gency.

Talk about exhilaration — ^^one could not begin to
have so much fun and uplift driving the car himself, as
if he were being driven by Sam. The car is always

JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 155

smoking in some joint when Sam is driving. And I am
sure that few drivers would have thought of driving
his car into the lake just to give us one of those "expe-
riences" that keeps you from doing it again. It took
nineteen Kennebec county politicians and a piece of
rope to pull us out. Hon. J. C. Murphy, the talented
journalist, engineered the job, in the interests of
democracy.

The moral of all this is — never do anything that you
can hire someone else to do better. Stick to your own
job. When I want an exciting ride — I am not going to
drive a car. I am going to ride with Sam. His knees
may shake ; his emergency may be on ; he may be taken
with speed mania every now and then, but something
sure will happen to interest and divert you. But when
I don't want to be excited or diverted, I ride with some
quiet party. Sam's license gives him no right to take
me by force. And when he is out with himself and no
one else, riding gaily along at full speed, all brakes set
— remember that there goes a determined, a self-
reliant, perfect master of the mechanism of the inter-
nal combustion engine — Sam E. Conner. And if he
keeps on persevering, tearing up beds of salvia here
and there, the day will come when any man would as
soon ride with Sam as walk.

ON "CLASSIFYING MEN"

HIL LOWELL of Lewiston has been a mer-
chant and a commercial traveler all of his life
— and a good one. He fell ill a year or so ago,
up in a small town in New Hampshire. He is
now about town again, not robust but in
God's providence likely to have many more
happy days.

When he was stricken, his daughter hastened to his
side. When able to speak, the doctor was summoned

156 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

and Mr. Lowell said: "What is it, doctor, a shock?"
"Yes." "I thought so," said Mr. Lowell. Calling his
daughter, he said : "Pack my samples ; send them back
to the House (meaning the business house), tell them
that I am very ill and shall never take the road again."

It was done as directed and one morning word was
brought to the invalid's bedside that the head of the
New York house — a great merchant from a great city —
was down stairs and would like to see him.

"I wanted to see you," said the Head of the House,
"to tell you to be of good cheer. I came because I
wanted to come, hoping to do you good."

"But, sir," was the reply, "I am all thru. I shall
work no more. I have resigned. You best fill my
place. My connection with the House is over. I am
sorry; but it is the end." To this the Head of the
House replied: "We shall wait and see. Be of good
cheer. Let us talk of other things."

A little while later, maybe a month, a letter came to
the sick man, saying that the house was still hoping
for his better health ; that it had not filled his place and
had no present intention of filling it ; no desire to do so.
On the contrary, it had retained him and had sent out
letters to all of his customers notifying them of the
circumstances and asking them to consider themselves
Mr. Lowell's customers. They had sent out samples
and requested orders.

Other letters of comfort and encouragement fol-
lowed this and a few days ago came a letter from the
House in which Mr. Lowell was informed that things
were going very well in their business relations, men-
tioning sales made by the House to Mr. L.'s customers ;
discussing matters intimately and enclosing a check for
some hundreds of dollars as commissions on sales made
by the House to the trade formerly handled by the
invalid.

I am relating this story not simply because it is a
story of kindness and thoughtfulness — not because it

JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 157

is the Golden Rule in business. It might be said that
if there were more such instances, there would be fewer
I. W. W. It might be said that if there were fewer
I. W. W. there would be more such instances. It might
be said that it was the result of faithful service by the
Man to the House. It might be said that it is such
houses that win the service that calls for such
examples.

No! That is not the reason. The real reason is
more subtle and more difficult to express. I may be
encroaching on forbidden ground in relating it. But I
tell it because it was told to me first by a Lewiston man
who said, "That was fine, I think. I am proud to tell
the story because the firm concerned is run by men of
my Faith — Jews. And it goes to show that you cannot
classify men by race, religion, traditions, antipathies.
Men are men — or not men. And the big thing we are
learning in this day of trouble as Nations, is this very
thing. All brothers !"

ON "LIVING BY RIVERS"

HEN I was a boy, I lived by a river and I know
what an influence big rivers are apt to exert
upon boys.

Im^'^ Rivers reach out with abounding imagina-
^^^ tion, to youth. This river of my youth was
one of the four great rivers of Maine and led

out to the sea. Many big ships were built upon it and
went away down stream into the distance never to
return. They disappeared behind the headlands, but
we could still hear the voices of the crews chanteying
"Way Down on Rio! Way Down on the Rio Grande!"
and the call of strange places was felt in the blood of
all the boys of our town. Many boys that we knew
went off in the ships and came back perhaps in a year
or two for a little stay in town, swaggering a good deal

158 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

and telling strange tales of spice-lands, and strange for-
eign cities — of Lima and Callao, and "Frisco" and
South Seas, and adventures in the "Roaring Forties."
These tales seemed to belittle the quiet, commonplace
lives of us stay-at-home boys and never a boy returned
to sea without some other boy went with him. Now and
then an old ship, built in our town, came back and tied
up at the dock and was ultimately broken up. So the
ships that went and the boys that went — some never
to return — all had their effect upon us. Our river
seemed like the resistless current sweeping us away
to the lands of Sindbad. There was never a boy in our
town that was content to stay at home. It was almost
a disgrace.

The moods and tenses of the river have their effects
on youth as does all environment, but with particularly
healthful results, I believe, in the case of the river.
The river was alive. It touched our emotions and
awakened them. We lived in it and upon it. We used
to go down to its wharves in days of storm and lie in
the soft shavings of the ship-yards and hear the waves
beat up under the piers and dream and sleep, awaking
to hear the song of the river, dreamful, mystical,
world-calling. On wild and rainy nights of high gales,
we would walk along the river street and as solitude
was my choice especially, I was deeply moved by the
sobbing of the storm and the lashing of the waves, and
the pitiless night ; and often in the deeper night when
all others were abed, I have pressed my face against
the rain-washed pane and listened to the roar of the
river until daj'' broke. Equally did we love it in calm
summer-days. It lay like a mirror, broken only by the
leap of the sturgeon whose mighty splashes have
awakened me on manj^ a summer Sunday morning.
We fished in the river, swam in it, learned to sail boats
on it, traded in crude boats in boys' coin — such craft
as punts and skiffs, out of which the harvest of drowned
boys was appalling.

JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 159

I count it a special dispensation for a boy to be bom
en the shores of one of our four great Maine rivers. It
is especially fortunate if he be born where ships come
and go. It is no wonder that poets have likened the
river to the river of life — small beginnings, shoals and
rapids in its middle course; quieter broadening out at
the close, and finally a gentle assimilation into the mys-
tery of the shoreless seas. The person born and reared
where ships come and go, gets something of a new
faith. He counts no ship that he saw launched and
sail away as ever lost. To him they still sail the seas,
with gay flags yet flying — ever going and coming. So,
too, with friends, dear friends, loved ones, who have
gone on like the ships behind the headlands. The veil
is not rent, as yet, but thru it, mistily, we see them as
with the ships, waving to us over their sides, with
shining faces and beckoning hands.

ON "THE FIRST SKATES"

UTUMN passed, and now winter has come, and
have you seen a, boy with a steeple-topped
squirrel trap or a boy with a top or a pair of
skates? These be degenerate days. Neither
are there any sling-shot or marbles — hardly
any — nowadays.
They have gone, I reckon, and now we find boys
passing their afternoons in the picture shows and
growing wise on Charlie Chaplins. Skates will be the
last to go ; but never will they hold the place in child-
hood's affections that once they held. And there is a
reason. They are too common. Anyone can now have
a pair of skates as fine and fast and as securely
patented to the sole of the shoe as tho they cost ten
times as much. Skates have been democratized.
Skates have become what the automobile will have be-

160 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

come when everyone can have one — quite too full of
the human-brotherhood idea to be acceptable to the
truly exclusive. So youth goes to the picture show and
scorns skates. Nothing for the modern lad short of a
chummy-roadster.

There was a time, however, not more than forty
years ago, when to achieve a pair of first-class skates
was equal to extorting a Ford out of father. The gray-
haired reader has a memory, we warrant, of a pair of
skates that once filled his eye and he sees a picture of
a small boy with his cold nose pressed against a shop-
window in some country town drinking in the beauties
of a pair that stamped themselves into his youthful
brain as with a brand of iron, plucked but recently
from the burning. And his dreams, out there in the
cold ! All of a lad, strangely like himself but somehow
stronger and stouter grown, swinging along over the
smooth ice of pond or river, the steel singing at his
heels the song of Mercury, on the four winds.

What do boys do, now, anyway! Do they build
snow-forts as once they did ? Do they spend long days
and nights on open-ice, skating away, flushed, strong
and happy ? Do they work for the wage that buys their
guns and ammunition? Do they go without a single
thing, just by way of learning humility and sacrifice?
Do you remember the first pair of skates you ever
owned? Was it not the product of a rummage-sale in
which neighboring junk-piles and old-home sinkspouts
went up the flue ? Were they not of antique build and
commonly known thruout the neighborhood? Were
they "rockers?" Did they have a toe that curled up
over the foot and were the tops ornamented with a
brass acorn ? Did they go on with a screw into a gimlet
hole, in the heel of the boot ; and did they ever stay on !
and was the hole ever just right ; and could you dig out
the snow and ice when you got to the pond ; and did the
straps ever hold and did you know that you had any
feet, after the first ten minutes ?

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 161

Oh well ! Why repine ! You had your fun. There
were warm, red-mittened hands snugly tucked in
yours ; and flowing curls of brown or chestnut to tickle
your nose; and red cheeks to look at and a beating
heart to feel throbbing against yours as you swung
with your first pair of skates over the ice. They do
not have any such ice nowadays, perhaps. Your
skates were as good as anyone's. The first pair of club-
skates that you ever saw were reputed to have cost six
dollars, and no boy ever had six dollars. If he had hap-
pened to have that much, he would have bought a
candy-store. Thirty cents was a going price for a
skatable article. But you could do the Dutch-roll, cut
curlicues; do the figure eight and grind-bark. And
sometimes you could do them backward, when your
girl was not looking on. Club-skates marked the doom
of the boyhood skating. When they came down to 99
cents a pair, there was no struggle in them. The mod-
ern boy will now go out and buy a pair along with his
cigarette money and then have his shoes tapped and
shined. Dad is easy.

But still we are glad we lived when it was worth
while to go skating. Uncle Aleck is glad, too. He was
a famous skater. He says he learned in the days when
boys went barefoot winters and that he had such hard-
calloused heels, that he used to bore a hole in his bare
heel and screw the skate-screw into it. Uncle Aleck
could skate as well as the girls now skate, at Winter-
garden. He was a homely man on foot but a god on
ice. I am sorry that skating is no longer popular. It
tended to democracy of the republican nature. The
rich as well as the poor were likely to fall or skate into
a hole. And that was something.

ON "THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF WHISKERS"

CIENCE, especially that which is given in the
woman's department of the modern newspa-
per, is making rapid strides.

We notice, for instance, an article in such a
column, this week, on the scientific value of
whiskers, which is not so interesting to the
woman's department as it is elsewhere, because every
woman knows the scientific value of whiskers better
than man knows it.

The Scientist in question, after talking about the
disappearance of whiskers as pure adornment, once
popular, but now gone with black-walnut furniture and
hanging lamps, says that the whisker was originally
intended as a feeler — a sort of telephone against run-
ning into obstacles. For instance, a man with a fine
set of bushy whiskers could go anywhere in the night
and by protruding his head with his whiskers, the
slightest obstacle would touch the end of the feelers
and he would be apprised thereof.

This is really wonderful! How strange are the
ways of the Lord. Picture our early ancestors, going
around dark nights, on hands and knees, with their
whiskers floating out, starboard and port, confident
that where their whiskers could go, they could go also.
The cat is the present illustration of the case of early
parents. The cat has never outgrown the necessity
for her whiskers. The whiskers of the cat are exactly
as long as the cat's head, and the cat's head is exactly
as wide as the cat's body. Wonderful ! The whiskers
protrude and wire back to the gland in the cat's nose.
Any touch on the end of the whisker reaches the brain
of the cat. So here we have a portable wireless on the
end of a cat's nose.

Take other adornments of animal nature. There is
a cow's tail. It is commonly and crudely supposed that

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 163

it was built onto the end of a cow for the purpose of
brushing away flies. But it is not the original use nor
the greater use. If you have ever sat under the star-
board (or is it port?) side of a cow and been industri-
ously extorting milk with all of the lush freedom with
which a democratic congress gathers in the income tax
from the non-cotton growing states, and had the cow
swipe you in the eye with the more or less unsanitary
end of the affair, you could believe anything. The
cow's tail was originally a pump handle for milking the
cow. There is no doubt of that. It is exactly as long
as a cow's tail ; it is exactly as wide as a cow's tail ; and
it is placed at the south, or milk-producing, end of the
cow. It is simply atrophied as a pump-handle, by non
use. I can fancy that olden day, when your great, great,
great, etc., parent used to go creeping thru the bushes
at night guided by a large set of bushy red whiskers
that served as warmth, light and rudder, creeping up
to a real cow, with a real tail, seizing her and pumping
the milk. Those must have been good old days. No
wonder the milkman sticks to the pump-handle even to
the present. I suppose it is a sort of survival of the
milkman's past, an avatar of that early day when the
scenes aforesaid occurred that even now send the
milkman out to the pump to yank her to and fro, purely
from habit.

Yes, science is making rapid strides. No longer
man grows a beard that he may feel his way around.
No longer the boy milks by the familiar methods which
need no comment. We use electricity instead. But
the day will never come again when milking is what it
used to be. What sport it was to go out in the barn
early in the morning and meet the cows. How the
milk sang in the frosty pails. How the warm breath
of the cows arose upon the air. Science has never
improved upon nature. And science as found in daily
newspapers with its convictions on the cat's whiskers

164 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

and the whiskers of Adam and Noah and our early-
fathers, does much substantial good in calling to mind
those attitudes of primogeniture and making us wise
to danger. For if we persist in riding, we shall lose
the use of legs. If we persist in turning up our noses
at other people, we shall lose our sense of smell. Un-
doubtedly we could once flop our ears like the mule.
What a loss today. Fancy the delicate tone shadings
it gives to the lower animals. Picture an audience at
the Symphony, suddenly throwing its ears forward
with a swoop, at the pianissimo; erect, at the piano;
longitudinal, at the forte ; to the rear, at the fortissimo.
And then the grand ensemble of the orchestra with
every ear wagging back and forth, up and down and
round the circle according to the sensitive perceptive-
ness of the ear. A glorious picture indeed.

So as a moral : Don't give over the regular and con-
servative use of the rudimentary organs. Don't get
so lazy that you can't talk or walk or smell or taste or
feel or think. Above all, don't forget to think.

ON "THE UGHT IN THE EAST"

HE woman lay, waiting the dawn of day. It
was in a handsome room in a great house on a
high hill, eleven miles from the nearest city
whose factory whistles she could often hear
and whose bells came sweet to her ears some-
times of a still morning.
This day was to be the greatest day in all the world,
save one or two, which Christians especially observe.

The woman had, as usual, passed a dreamful night
— another of those long nightmares of haunted memo-
ries. A long stretch of blasted moor dug deep with
craters, in which stagnant water had gathered, cov-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 165

ered with green scum and floating, nameless things!
A long road stretching away into infinity, bordered on
either side by trees whose tops had been torn away and
whose trunks were blackened and twisted ! Sometimes
strange shapes flitted across them; moving armies,
flights of masked men ; huge engines crawling like cat-
erpillars and crushing human forms as they passed;
rat-filled trenches vomiting flame; barbed wire and
death ! Every night, by the edge of one of these holes,
lay a figure that filled her soul with horror and made
her heart almost stand still ; a figure that evoked mem-
ories of a childhood form and of clinging baby arms.
The face eluded her. She had never seen beneath the
visor of the iron helmet. Sometimes she had not dared
to look; at other times she must look but could not.
All this for eleven months !

The light in the East reddened a trifle and came in
at the window and settled on the floor. And then
something new and effulgent slowly rose along with it
from the floor, slowly creeping along the wall. It
seemed a faint, aurora-like gleam as from beyond the
hills — even from eternal fires beyond the imperial sun
itself. It spread like a halo as if seeking some object
on which to fasten itself. The woman stretched her
arms aloft, her draperies falling from her, her hands
clasped as in prayer. And the light slowly moved and
moved and gathered itself and shone with faint flush-
ings as tho a lambent flame from some moving taper
searching in the night.

And lo! From out the dimness of the room, there
shone the face of a child — the sweetest face ever pict-
ured— the Christ-child in the Madonna's arms. On
this pictured face the light settled and then the picture
seemed to step forth, as tho borne with the swift,
soft step of a mother carrying her babe thru danger
into safety. It filled the room! It seemed to glow
and scintillate and to enrich the dawn. It seemed to

166 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the woman to be both omen and joy. It seemed to her
to be word out of the infinite that, after all, mother-
hood was to be enthroned in the world and the Babe
was to be the symbol of a day when the world was to
be without hatred and bitterness, under the inspiration
of the new-born Christ.

Such a dawn! The East was filled with a glory
that seemed to presage strange and unusual things;
but it was nothing to the glory that filled the room.
The woman's heart almost stopped beating. She lifted
herself to her knees and knelt in adoration before the
Madonna and the child. "It must be a sign," cried she,
and her voice rang strangely thru the silence. A sound
as of music filled her ears. And the light shone
steadily on the vision of the pictured Madonna — never
before materialized in this woman's life — tho one of
faith.

And then, faint and clear over the hills, came the
sound of distant bells and the roar of triumphant
whistles! The still air of daybreak carried the story
of unusual things. She would not believe what her
heart told her was true. She watched the vision in the
little room instead and prayed and prayed! And still
the bells rang over the hilltops and the whistles of the
distant town kept up their sounding. And the light
slowly spread within the room and caught the golden
frame of the picture and picked up the familiar set-
tings of the chamber and its surroundings and swept
out to meet the full day by the western windows look-
ing out on high hills and deep valleys of the November
landscape.

And then the faint tinkling of the telephone bell
sounded at her bedside and there was a low voice over
the wire and the single word was "Peace !"

And the woman fell back upon her pillow and it was
wet with tears of joy. For her boy yet lived and would
come back to her !

ON "AFTER DINNER SPEAKERS"

F I WERE going to give advice to a young man,
I should say, "Never become addicted to the
baleful habit of after-dinner speaking." I
have seen men who, in some rare moment, got
away with a really good after-dinner speech.
Men came to them and said, "It was a gem."
They flushed with pleasure. I have seen them later in
life — no longer the light, rollicking, care-free young
men, with light blue eye and curling locks, but hunted-
looking, pale, anaemic, bilious, furtive. And as I have
seen them later, also, up there at the head table, full of
pepsin-tablets and with no taste for the viands, I have
said to myself, "Better a happy, care-free opium-eater
than given over, body and soul, to the snares of this
fearful habit of after-dinner oratory."

I have often fancied the fate of the inveterate
after-dinner speaker. A sword of Damocles hangs
over his head all of the time, with accent on the Dam.
He never knows when his telephone bell will ring and
someone will call him up and say "We have booked you
for a little speech after our dinner for the collection of
peach-stones." Or "We want you to talk to our Neigh-
borhood Club at its dinner to the ladies. You may
choose your own subject." He gulps a half-refusal,
for he has other business ; but the habit is fixed. The
awful thirst is in his blood. He yields and again stag-
gers to the orgie. His wife and children see him less
and less. He wanders about the streets muttering.
He seizes on futile stories and jokes that may be useful.
He sinks lower and lower into the gutter of the banquet
table and finally finds a grave in the little yard outside
the nut-factory — "Sacred to the memory of John Doe.
He was a confirmed after-dinner speaker."

The idea that all an after-dinner speaker needs is a
dress-suit and an engaging smile is where the trouble

168 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

comes. Some people — those who get up banquets —
seem to think that after-dinner oratory is pure spon-
taneity and requires no effort but that of joyous
speech. Perhaps it is the fault of the after-dinner
speaker that this false notion obtains. He gets him-
self up to deceive. He stands on one foot and curves
the other gracefully around the chair leg and tries to
pass himself off as thinking on one foot. He stumbles
along, emitting witticisms that seem to be drawn from
the occasion. Somehow society seems to esteem the
speech that is made without any forethought whatever,
at a higher value than the speech to which an earnest
man had given time and deep consideration. So the
after-dinner speaker wastes most of his time trying to
jolly the listeners into the notion that it is spontaneous.
If they only knew! Joe Choate was a great after-
dinner speaker. But he used to spend about all of his
spare time writing after-dinner extemporaneous
speeches.

A man died in Detroit the other day who had the
reputation of being the readiest and wittiest after-din-
ner speaker in the middle west. His fame was all over
the land. He died, early (all after-dinner speakers are
quickly taken off), and among his effects was a card-
index of after-dinner speeches for all occasions. He
had them for lawyers; for doctors; for dentists; for
undertakers ; for postmen ; for politicians ; for automo-
bilists; for rotarians; for women's clubs; for hotel-
men — ^for every possible combination. For instance,
he could combine a speech for the undertakers with one
for the doctors (see cross references on index-cards)
and he could combine an after-dinner speech to lawyers
with one addressed to the "lifers" in the penitentiary.
That man had system. And it takes system — a cast-
iron one — ^to stand it. To arise before a crowded
assembly, all eating ice-cream and battering their
plates with their spoons, and talk thru the confusion

JUST TALES ON COMMON THEMES 169

of waiters breaking the china, while a dryness clutches
at your throat and the pit of your stomach is playing
"Over There" against your lumbar vertebrse, and per-
petrate witticisms and slam around philosophy and
belch forth eloquence and run a hundred-yard dash in
brilliancy with a lot of other equally misguided inver-
tebrates, is sure to require system and then System.

I want, therefore, to plead with you, my dear read-
ers who sit back in among the gilded throng that
attend the sacrifice of these noble martyrs to an Ameri-
can custom. You are in the boxes of the Coliseum at
Rome. They are the early Christians, flung to the
lions. You see before you men each one of whom is on
his way directly to trouble. Every one of them will
land either in the lunatic asylum or in the United
States Senate or in Congress or in some other such
retreat for the idle rich. A few reform and are saved.
Most of them are in the clutch of the maelstrom, hope-
lessly lost. But whatever their fate — ^be kind to them.
B3 kind to them.

ON "WALT WHITMAN AND SOME OTHERS"

HIRTY-five years ago, prowling around in what
was formerly the Peucinian Library at Bow-
doin College, we fell on half a dozen copies of
Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass." It had
evidently been in great demand. Whitman
published his first edition of the book in 1851,
no publisher being willing to take over the contract and
Whitman being a printer and a newspaper man with
courage to publish it himself. In July of that year,
Emerson wrote Whitman the famous letter which the
poet published by advice of his friend, Charles A. Dana,
and which brought such contumely and criticism on
Emerson who hailed Whitman as a genius.

170 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Of course you know what was the great pother
about the book. It had too many red corpuscles in it.
As Vance Thompson used to say, there was nothing
"caduque" about Whitman; he was all Man. He said
things about the great mystery of reproduction that
looked not to pruriency but to worlds without end,
visions of the earth teeming with races and our duty,
in the prospect. It was a very circumspect age.
People used the fig-leaf for their emotions instead of
using it as a fan. The book having been read out of
meeting, the college boys were evidently stimulated to
have copies enough for general circulation.

All that has passed. We now look to purpose alone.
A puritanical politician in Washington kicked Whitman
out of a government job because the politician happened
one day — fourteen years after the first edition ap-
peared— ^to have just found out that Whitman had
written "Leaves of Grass." "Dismissed for having
written an immoral book," said he. If it be immoral,
so is the Bible. Its thought is as pure as the driven
snow. All the difference between Whitman and the
weeping-willow literature of that period was that
Whitman did not happen to be a punky anaemic. John
Burroughs (the sweetest thing in all the world) loved
the "good, gray poet" and wrote a book of friendship
on him. The poet's life was passed in chastity, charity
and in tending the sick in the hospitals of the Civil
War.

Whitman was the most glorious looking man who
ever lived, save the Man of Calvary. John Burroughs
says: "His sweet, aromatic personality seemed to ex-
hale sanity, purity, naturalness . . . producing an
exaltation of mind and soul that no man's presence
ever did before." He was pure as his life and his per-
son. All the trouble with him was — he recognized that
there are Men, Women and a Cosmos. Whitman praised
all the virtues and hated the Carnal and the Mean.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 171

This distinction some of his imitators have not made.
They assume that because Whitman talked plainly
about great and pure things, they may talk plainly
about small and nasty things. I have in mind a book,
published by an author in this city, a man of genius
and poetical instinct who has made this mistake. He
is thinking about individuals, as tho they were races
of men. When Whitman wrote of sexual things, it
was in the way of worlds without end and progress to
the ultimate, never about individual passions, or erotic
diseases.

Here is Whitman's creed and this is what I am driv-
ing at : "Love the earth and the sun and the animals ;
despise riches ; give alms ; stand up for the stupid and
crazy; devote your income and labor to others; hate
tyrants; argue not concerning God; have patience;
take off your hat to nothing, known or unknown, or to
any number of men; go freely with powerful, unedu-
cated persons and with the young and with the mothers
of families ; re-examine all you have been told in church
or in school or in any book; dismiss anything that in-
sults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a
great poem and have the richest fluency, not only in the
silent lines of the lip and face but between the lashes
of your eyes and in every joint of your body." "I have
no chair, no church, no philosophy," adds he. "I lead
no man to a dinner-table, library or exchange, but each
man and each woman of you, I lead upon a knoll, my
I'ft hand hooking you around the waist, my right hand
pointing to the landscapes of continents and the public
road. Nor I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for
you, you must travel it by yourself. It is not far, it is
within reach, perhaps you have been on it since you
were born and did not know, perhaps it is everywhere
on water and on land."

ON "THE FIRST SNOW STORM"

j'-j^f^i! OST of us have somewhere in the back of our
^^¥r i^^i^*^' ^ dream of snug retreat in some farm-
Lx i| house in the country, high on a hill ; with the
^^ . snow blowing around it; with much music of
^^ _ wailing wind and with big flakes spattering
'■ the windows. We seem to hear the kettle

singing in the kitchen, and mother humming around
the stove with the indefatigable quickstep of the busy-
housewife.

The little boy who seems to be a very small edition
of yourself, presses his face against the clear places in
the pane and looks out on a world, all shrouded with a
thick veil of enormous flakes that come sailing down
criss-cross. He can just see the barn-door and the
pump in the barnyard and the big elm in the intervale
and the henhouse, where he keeps his pullets, but he
cannot see the schoolhouse, a half a mile away, because
the snow is coming down so fast. It is funny, the
things the first snow does. It builds little pyramids on
the wood pile and on the blue knob, on top of the pump.
It attaches itself to the nails in the barn-door, in such
way that little round knobs stick out all over it, like a
fifer's eyeball. It decorates the chimney top and
sticks to the north side of the chimney in fantastic
way. It sticks to father, out there doing the chores.
When he comes in he stomps tremendously with his
cowhides and mother gets a broom to brush him. And
the little boy goes to the door and pokes out his head
and looks up into the sky and sees — nothing but snow-
flakes.

I will bet that there is not a person of mature years
who has not frequently recurring memories of the first
snow of years long since passed away. He hears it
ticking away against the windows ; he hears it singing
of coming winter in the chimney ; he thinks reluctantly,

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 173

for its very sadness, of the chimney-comer and those

that sat about it. It must have been its beauty, that
unconsciously impressed itself upon him and made
memory as long as life lasts. For there is nothing like
beauty to stamp a thing into childhood memory.
Beauty and variety ! For it also brought a new as well
as beautiful world to young eyes. A world of meadows
and fields obliterated, a world of running brooks swept
away. In place of these came a world of still, white,
measureless snow. No wonder it endures in our lives
with singular pertinacity.

And the big snow storms! Those old-fashioned
snow-falls that just happened before we invented the
word "blizzard." Snow storms that were no interrup-
tion to traffic, because there was no traffic. Snow
storms that over-rode the fence tops, hid the apple
trees, buried the hen-coop and the pig-pen; filled the
road even with the stone walls on either side. Snow
storms so big that even the darned (I use the word rev-
erently) old school teacher couldn't get to school. But
you could! And you plowed, neck-deep, through it
and found him there and you and he were the only
scholars and you did not have a thing to do but live in
warm and tenderly affectionate intimacy with him and
found new and unexpected phases of his character that
made you believe that after all he was human. Snow
storms so big that no breaking-out teams passed for
days. Snow storms so big that father stayed in the
house and mother made mincemeat. Snow storms so
big that, when the winds blew, they took the tops off the
drifts and again made the roads impassable and there
was no school for three days and you stayed in and read
"Robinson Crusoe."

I reckon that there will be snow in Heaven. It is
too beautiful not to be there. How pretty it will look
on the golden streets ! Nothing but perfection is to be
found in the snowflakes. They are all perfectly cut

174 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

jewels of crystal, finer in mathematical accuracy than
lapidaries can make. Thoreau says "Snowflakes are
the wheels of the storm-chariots, the wreck of chariot-
wheels after a battle in the skies. These glorious
spangles, the sweeping of Heaven's floor. So there
must be snow, up there. And they all sing in the
measure of the hexagon, six, six, six."

The first snow teaches also transmutation of earth
into heaven. "God takes the water of the sea in His
hand," again says Thoreau, "leaving the salt; He dis-
perses it in mist ; He re-collects it and again sprinkles it
like grain in six-rayed stars of snow over the earth,
there to lie till it dissolves its bonds again." Is not
that like the Lord's handling of human souls? He
takes them in His hand; leaving the earthy. He car-
ries them to the skies. He re-collects them there and
again distributes them over the earth, there to live
until they again dissolve their bonds, to return again
to Heaven and to a new earth.

ON "MAKE YOUR LIFE A UVING SPRING"

F YOU can keep your mind from running
adrift, you do a good work. Every now and
then some foolish lad kills himself because he
is jilted by a girl — as tho he could not live
without her when girls are girls and there
are just as sweet ones, perhaps, as she who
knows better than he that two cannot be happy together
where two do not love.

Keep your mind from becoming morbid over certain
things you think you desire and without which you
think life insupportable. Material things are not
essential. "Do men curse you ?" says Marcus Aurelius.
"Do they threaten to kill and quarter you? How can
this prevent YOU from keeping your mind temperate

JUIST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 175

and just? It is much as tho a man that stands by the
side of a pure and lovely spring should fall a-railing
at it. The water never ceases bubbling up for all of
that. And if you should throw clay and dirt in it, it
would disappear and disperse and the fountain would
not be polluted. Which way now are you to go to work
to keep your springs always running that they may
never stagnate into a pool ? I will tell you ; you must
always preserve in you the virtues of freedom, sin-
cerity, sobriety and good nature."

What I want to bring to the surface in that wonder-
ful sentiment of the Pagan philosopher who was wiser
than almost any other man who has lived, is this: do
not let the fountain of your life become a pool.

That is what happens when the young man takes
his life for such silly reasons. That is what happens
when a man becomes half-crazy in his rage against
another. That is what happens when a man goes
around fancying suspicion against his best friends.
That is what happens when a man becomes insanely
jealous. That is what happens when a man be-
comes discouraged, to the point of quitting all effort.
That is what happens when a man ceases to be
happy at life. The pool is an evil thing in the woods —
for instance. It is covered with scum and peopled by
monsters and rife with disease. Try, by the virtues
indicated by Marcus Aurelius, to have your life a foun-
tain, bubbling away clear and sweet, rippling and
sparkling; full of sweetness and life-sustaining quali-
ties. It sweetens not only the surrounding pathways
but all of the lands thru which its waters flow. It runs
away merrily and men and women bless its outflow.
In all times we have idealized the spring. I like the
French word "Source" as a synonym of spring.
Chaucer never called it anything but the "Source."

And is it not so ? Life — your life should be like the
spring — not like the pool. Something giving out — not

176 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

standing still and waiting for something to fall into it.
It may be that you shall get some rain and some sweet-
ness in such a pool, but for the most part it will be
slime, blackness, evil thoughts, dark clouds and snaky
things.

Any man or woman can make of life a bubbling
fountain — if he will. All lives are capable of it. The
old philoisopher has given the recipe, freedom, sincer-
ity, sobriety and good nature. Freedom is the biggest
word in the four and it comprehends all that makes a
man wise and liberal. It contains within its signifi-
cance, disentanglement from the slavery of selfishness,
of greed, of lust, of mean ambitions, of sins and mean-
nesses. Following this, comes the necessity of doing
this with sincerity — ^believing, believing, believing, be-
lieving. And the sobriety which suggests conserva-
tism of beauty. And finally good nature — ^blessed
radiance of some lives whose rich flower is in human
hearts aching after they have passed away.

If there is any one of you who will determine to
make his life a bubbling spring rather than a pool —
please stand up now and say so. It is needed — ^your
testimony in these days, especially.

ON "GREETINGS TO SCHOOL CHILDREN"

REETINGS and a word, on the way, to that
army of school children of America, march-
ing, after the long summer vacation in the
year of 1918, along the old-accustomed paths
to school.

You, alone of all armies, retain your full
quota. All others are torn either by enlistment or by
shot and shell. Your fathers, your brothers, your sis-
ters, your mothers, are "over there." You are proud
of them and sometimes in fancy, can see them thru the

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 177

smoke and dust. You expect them to do their duty.
Have you thought that they expect YOU to do yours ?
How are you going to do it? What sort of duty is
yours to do?

Let us think it over. The first thing a sol-
dier learns is discipline. It is sometimes spelled
"o-b-e-d-i-e-n-c-e." Disobedience in the army is a
shame and a disgrace. In extreme cases it is punished
by death; in lesser cases, by hardships almost as bad
as death.

The second thing he learns is courtesy. The good
soldier carries himself like a gentleman. He is obliged
to speak politely to his superiors in rank. By this
means he comes to speak politely to his comrades.
Courtesies sweeten the soldier's life. They smooth
the army work. They lessen the burdens in hospital
and camp for our sisters and our mothers who are
"over there."

The third big thing the soldier learns is neatness.
He can't be a soldier and be anything but clean in attire
and equipment. And when he is neat and clean, he
thinks better of himself.

Other big things that come to him are pride of the
company, the regiment, the soldier's pride of courage,
victory, honor, truth, love of country. He finds his
very soul in the army. He finds HIMSELF also —
prompt, able, courteous, honest, dutiful.

You — scholars of America — must emulate the sol-
dierly discipline of the Armies of America. You are
the greatest and best army that we have left at home.
You must be courteous. You must be obedient, you
must be clean and neat ; you must work faithfully — as
never before. This is no common year. Everything
is different — school has greater meaning as has every-
thing else in life. You must remember that this war
is being fought largely for you. Most of us will be
gone before its full benefits can possibly come. YOU
will be alive and will enjoy them.

178 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

It is a fine army — this that sets out for school under
the peaceful elms. How different from that huddled,
flame scorched army of boys and girls of Belgium and
Northern France wearing gas-masks, fleeing between
the screeching shells to some underground refuge
where they study, to the thunder of great guns and the
roar of explosions. If you have any sense of gratitude
to those who are dying for you over there, can you fail
to appreciate your opportunities this year, of all years ?
Can you afford to be thoughtless or ineflftcient, dis-
obedient or discourteous? Does not the vision of the
great war make you more proud of your American
birth and lineage ? Does not the picture of those other
school-children in lands of war, make you better appre-
ciate what you enjoy here? And will you remember
now, hour by hour, that what the "boys" are fighting
for, is the right for you to walk in peace along these
quiet streets to a clean and well-ordered free school in
a free land.

And, boys and girls ! If you could only know how
large a part in all teaching depends ou YOU. I know
that you would be as good soldiers here as those older
boys and girls are, wherever they may be. You would
begin with obedience ; in all things, courteous ; glorying
in the spirit of the army of Freedom and Truth ; honest
to your school and yourself; proud of its victories;
appreciative of the service that those who are dying to
make men free, are giving you in pain and sacrifice as
you walk your way to and from your schools.

ON "THE OLD-TIME BOY-SHOP"

ROBABLY there was a little old-fashioned boy-
shop in your old-home town, that you still
recall with certain recollections of fondness.

Brack Andros kept the one that I recall, in
a Maine village where I was born. He was a
very tall, saturnine man with a tremen-
dously black beard, unquestionably dyed. He had a
most forbidding manner and a reputed kindly heart.
His store was up a flight of wooden stairs, very long and
narrow, not at all made for lounging. His door, when
opened, rang a bell that tinkled on silence and, in sum-
mer, seemed to rouse the blue-bottled flies that kept
house in the one window of the shop.

Brack (his full name was Brackett) was a store-
keeper, a photographer and a cobbler. He wore a black
glazed-cap that made him altogether more funereal and
Mephistophelian than otherwise. He never smiled. He
never sang or whistled ; but he had the faculty of hav-
ing boys around him all of the time, sitting around his
shoemaker's bench or watching him when he disap-
peared into the mysteries of his photographic room,
into which no boy ever entered.

Brack kept peg-tops, needles, spools, paper-soldiers,
cassia-buds, sticks of striped candies, enduring and
saccharine gooseberries, elastic for sling-shots, slates,
multiplication tables, paint-boxes, knuckle-bones, jack-
stones, and certain confections whose names you would
not know in these days if you were told. He never
gave you a welcome or called you "sonny," or anything
but "young man," in a deep bass. After he came to
know you, he addressed you by your surname. For in-
stance, if your name were Johnnie Bibber, he always
called you "Bibber" and you called him "Mister
Andros" as long as you lived. If you called him
"Brack" just out of deviltry, you knew it meant a dose

180 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

of "strap-oil" delivered with the shoe-maker's strap,
that went over his knee. Most boys like a hiding for
fun. Brack delivered it.

"Shut the door, young man," said Brack when you
entered and then, "Report, blast ye, report," and you
must face Mr. Andros and salute, saying "Good mornin'.
Mister Andros ! All right in limb, wind and whizzle."
If you failed, "Whizz !" went the whistling strap. This
shows that Mr. Andros knew boys and how to keep
their trade. When he was very playful, he would go
into the dark-room and emerge with a finger well
daubed with nitrate of silver of safe solution with
which he would streak your face, later to turn indelibly
black and leave you proudly looking like an Indian.

He used to sell cassia-buds at five cents a pill-box,
full. The pill-box was worn off at one side so that it
did not hold so many as it looked. What would you
not give for the tang of the cassia-bud in the little bul-
let-like, heart-shaped pellicles. You could not get it
now if you had a ton of them. Brack knew. He knew
the season for every game. When he put a set of
"glassers" in the window, the mud dried up immedi-
ately in the school-house yard. He knew when to put tops
in the window. He appointed St. Valentine's day, we
firmly believed. His best line was the old-fashioned
"comics." Some old maid stores were above comics.
They were brutal things. But Brack sold them
because boys wanted them. He would stand and sell
comics while a whole family waited for an ambro-
type. Some of his pictures will live forever; fair
looking men in velvet vests and with mighty beards.

Long ago, Brackett Andros joined his fathers. The
little old shop is gone. Most of them are gone every-
where. Boys are no longer interested in one-cent
goods. But something surely has gone with it.
Brack's steps were worn by children's feet. Men
grown to dignity of years never came back to the little

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 181

town but to open the door ; hear the shuffling feet ; see
the same old black, glazed cap and hear from beneath
the spectacles, hiding twinkling eyes, the old, old
words, "Report, Blast ye !" and himself to stiffen into
erectness and saluting to the eyebrow, ring forth:
"Good mornin', Mister Andros ; all right, limb, wind and
whizzle."

Will he be there, where all shall meet ? And shall
we hear the same old salutation and be able to answer
truthfully as of old ?

ON "BREAKING OF DROUTHS"

OU like a rainy day better than you like two or
three rainy days, don't you ? But in spite of
your weariness at the rainy season of June
and July, 1918, you recall certain days and
nights when the rain was music to your
ears, coolness to your brow and healing to
your soul.

Do you remember anything like this ? A long spell
of blazing sun of midsummer ; parched earth, brown and
dusty; heat-waves rising over the fields; no water in
the pastures for the stock. Then came a day when the
poplar-leaves turned up white in the trees near the
garden fence and seemed to be shivering all over; and
the winds sort of moaned, eerie-like, around the cor-
ners of the house ; and the hens preened their feathers.
And the next day the mists seemed to come up over the
fields and the men sat in the barn-door and looked at
the weather vane and wondered if it would be wise to
get any more hay down and then all of a sudden you
heard a sound like the tinkling of silver coin on the
roof and then a whispered lullaby as of myriad voices
singing a world to sleep; and then the steady fall of
the rain. And don't you remember the men, sitting in

182 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the doorway, with the rain slanting down across it, and
up in a cosy bed in the hay, a small boy listening to the
rain on the roof and dreaming big dreams? The
drouth had broken.

Have you ever come into camp or tavern at night
after a hard day in the rain or snow and after warm
supper and change of clothes and a pipe, crawled into
bed to hear the waves on the beach, or the sleet on the
roof, or the tree swishing against the logs outside and
withal, the firelight in the open fire-place leaping to the
storm ?

Did you ever see the breaking of the storm; the
lessening of the down-fall; the rolling back of the
hordes of the sky; the lightening of the gloom; the
silencing of the heavy artillery of the tempest; the
coming of the blue beneath the flying scud ; and at last,
the sun ; ultimately, the stars in all their glory ?

You have. Would you exchange it for never-ending
sunshine, a succession of days with never a cloud?
Would you prefer a world without any turmoil, without
storm or snow or sleet or rain? Do you suppose that
it ever rains when it is not needed for the general plan
of life, to water and enrich the earth, to bring the dust-
germs to the soil, to reduce nitrogens and gases of
other kinds, to give a bath to nature where she
needs it?

So do not fret when it rains on your new straw hat.
Don't grumble if it rains a week to the defeat of your
vacation. Think of the brooks that now begin to run
to the sea; of the meadows, lush with upstanding
grasses ; of how even in the city streets, when the rain
swept down the canyons of the tall buildings and the
gutters gurgled, they were carrying away the corrup-
tion of a world. And if you can find no other analogy,
find it in the washing away of evil things in the storm,
even in the storm of the World on the Western Front.
Maybe after all, the world is destined to profit also by

n

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 183

storms of war and that they are essential to advance-
ment. Surely this war is bound to do some good, with
all its evil, all its suffering. Do we not hope and believe
that it will refresh our ideals and cause them to lift
their heads like withered grasses when the drouth
has broken? Do we not believe that it will spur on
growth and bring new things to flower as even does
the rain ?

And if the wind comes round right and stands in
the point of compass called God's justice, the day will
be long and full of peace under blue skies and soft and
tender airs, piping of peace.

ON "OWNING HALF OF A HORSE"

NCE upon a time I owned half of a horse. It
was when I was a young reporter on the
newspaper and roomed with a young man
with far more knowledge of a horse than I
had — and that was not saying much for him,
either. Personally, I hardly knew which end
of a horse went into a stall first and I could not have
harnessed a horse, if I were to have died for not
doing it.

This particular horse was a descendant of a rather
well-known Maine racer named Gideon which was, if I
remember aright, a son or a grandson of the great
Hambletonian. She was a gray and high-headed mare
and full of action. We called her "Notala," for two
reasons — one because we owed for most of her on a
note, and second, because she had no tail, or rather, a
docked tail. We used to ride some evenings with her
and my friend who was very successful in society, used
her to take his various girls out riding. I sort of
changed the name of my half of the horse to "No-
teller." Once or twice a week I used to get permission

184 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

to take my half of the horse out, and we used to lie
awake far into the night discussing which half he
owned and which half I owned. We always agreed,
however, which half of the note each of us owed. I
always owed the half that was coming due first.

Along about the latter part of August we discovered
that the mare had speed. A couple of boys can usually
find speed in a horse kept at a livery stable, on oats, as
was ours. We took on about everything that we met
on the road and as September came in, we trimmed
some horses on the way to fairs. The mare had speed
— ^no doubt about it and it was up to us to find out how
much speed she had, for those were the days when
speed in a brood mare was valuable, and our mare was
young and well bred. Then, too, State Fair sort of
imbued us with notions about speed and hoss-flesh ; for
we loafed around the horse stalls a bit.

After the Fair was over, we got permission to go up
to the track and try out our mare for extreme speed.
We got a light wagon and cut out all of the accessories
such as extra tires and hitching-weights, and borrow-
ing a split-second stop-watch, went to the track early
in the morning before any of the rail-birds could
"clock" our mare as she did the turns. My room-mate
was to drive and I was to hold the watch on him. He
scored once or twice by way of warming-up as we had
seen the jockeys do, and finally we let her go and I held
the watch. De-lighted! No name for it! Think of
it! Only 2.21 14! Remarkable. Again we put the
mare to it and this time I roared down the dawn, "Mile
in 2 min. 19 sec. We have got a world-beater."

We said nothing ; but we had a friend who wanted a
fast horse. He had plenty of money and had never
owned a horse. He knew as much about horses as we
did — no more. He was a college professor. We wrote
him about the mare and he came on to see her. He
liked her. We went up to the track — we three — and
tried the mare again. Again she did the trick around

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 185

2.20. He wanted her. We sold her at a nice profit,
paid our notes and were supremely sad and supremely
satisfied.

Time passed. Along about December we were vis-
ited by a man who looked like a horse-man. He said
that he had been training a gray mare belonging to a
certain man — naming our friend — ^and he understood
that he had bought the mare of us.

We said "yes, that was the fact." The man looked
us over shrewdly and seemed satisfied. "The mare is
bred as you say," said he with a rising inflection. "She
certainly is," said we. "And she had speed when you
sold her?" "She DID !" shouted we. "You know what
she did on the track to a wagon?" "Ye-e-s," said the
man. "And the man was there when he bought her
and saw her do it," said I. "Two-twenty, easy."

"Funny," said the man, "I have been driving that
mare to the snow and there ain't a four-minute horse
in Chelsea that can't beat her. I have been giving her
my best attention and I can't get her to go at all. I've
shod and booted her and she can't go. Somethin' must
a' happened to her or else I ain't no driver. You drove
her a mile in two-twenty? And the buyer saw it?"
"Yes," echoed we. "Where was it?" said the man,
sort of helplessly. "On the Maine State Fair track."
"Mile track?" said the man, sort of for lack of any-
thing else to say. "No-o-o," said one of us. "Half-
mile track; hanged if I know! None of us ever
thought." "How many times around did you go?"
shouted the man. "Once," said we.

I have always said that two innocent fools, each
owning half a hoss, can sell to good advantage if they
can get a man for a buyer who is equally innocent.
"Boys," said the man as he went away, "it's all right.
I can sell the mare for a driver ; but she ain't no speed-
hoss and if ever I do want to sell another hoss for
speed, I'll send him to you." And that was the end of
my end of a horse.

ON "JUSTICE AS A SOLVENT"

E HEAR a good deal about a middle ground of
unity between the warring "classes" of earth.
But what are classes ? Are men and women
to be classified because one man has been
frugal, thrifty, careful of his health, and self-
educated as against the man who has chosen
to do nothing all thru life but follow his passions, his
lusts, his idleness, all of the while grumbling at the man
who has gone ahead in service and in accumulation?
Does a million of the improvident, constitute a class
against a million of the provident ?

Oppression is what we should get after in this
world — and we should get after it by administration of
every agency that will obliterate it. It is a sly fox and
should be chased to its hole and there drowned out.
Special privileges are the mice that burrow into the
comfort of a million homes. Wrongful segregation of
the common utilities of life should be hunted down and
made to stop.

When the public speaker, therefore, talks about a
middle-ground of meeting in the warfare of nations
and classes within nations, he talks about "Justice."
The Bolshevist scorns justice, saying that it is merely
a specious interpretation of power, made by the man
who got the jump on the other and said that this is just
and that unjust, when as a matter of fact there is no
moral law involved. But justice is, nevertheless, the
solvent and the ideal of human comfort and right.
Generally, all human needs are spelled in three lan-
guages— physical, mental, spiritual. Justice is the
largest measure of human liberty consistent with the
rights of others. Those rights are not altogether in
food, clothing and luxuries. They are to be found also
in human-love, protection of children, sanctity of home,
right to live on the face of the earth, satisfaction of
the yearnings of spirit, conscience, religion, soul.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 187

It is absurd, therefore, to go on fighting for purely
material things. We cannot spell progress in dollars
altogether — nor even in shorter hours of labor. A
world in which every man was earning a hundred dol-
lars a week and working an hour a day, would starve
to death. The earth would laugh at him and say,
"Starve." The edict of Eden was "by the sweat of thy
brow shalt thou earn thy daily bread," or words to that
effect. If the materialist, who represented in the be-
ginning a common ownership of land and a common
right to land, had put his labor into a field of corn, he
would not care to share that labor and its productive-
ness with a man who sat along the edge of the furrow,
with his arms about the neck of a nymph and a bottle
of wine in his stomach. He would demand segregation
of that corn-field against such non-producer, and thus
would be set up again the "class." He would say, "This
is my field."

Democracy is not a Utopia of idleness. There is no
greater mistake than that comfort can come by less of
honest work. There is no truth in the notion that
"labor" is with the hands alone. Happiness is not alone
in creature comforts. Pleasure exacts the same toll
out of life as does toil — only more swift and depleting.
Its opposite is pain. The opposite of work is peace and
sound sleep. Those who talk as tho this world were all
of it and that what we can get here by theft, by
anarchy, by the red flag, is all to the good, are making
the terrible mistake of forgetting that we have three
natures — physical, intellectual and spiritual, and that
we all go hence to some reckoning. If this were true —
that all we get here by theft, anarchy and revolution, is
all to the good and that the end is oblivion — the world
is a monstrous mistake. This is the doctrine that sent
Germany to the trenches and made of the world a
shambles. This is the doctrine that our boys have been
fighting. Are they coming back to find that this doc-

188 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

trine is flourishing here at home, when they thought
that they had killed it in the trenches ?

Every time you hear this Godlessness preached
(and it is being preached) ; every time you hear any
man saying that this is the time to get all you can re-
gardless of the other fellow, you better deny it. This
IS the time to get what is consistent with justice, and
there never has been a time when it was not right to
do so. Justice thinks of no class, but all classes. It
encourages no enslavement of any man. It works for
equality up to capacity. It thereby encourages every
man to be prudent, persevering, studious and diligent.
If, under some dispensation, every man were equal to
his neighbor, the mind would cease to aspire and the
soul to expand. Justice just simply gives you a chance.
You can't be idle, lazy, cruel, gross and vindictive and
be "equal" to the man who has cultivated the pastures
of his mind and soul, any more than the barren field is
equal to that which ripples in the golden wheat.

ON "A STORY *HOW HOSEA CAME' "

T WAS a dark and stormy night, on Moosehead
Lake. The crowd of sports were sitting in
Elgin Greenleaf's camp at Sugar Island. It
had started in to snow along about three
o'clock and Elgin had sent the steamer down
to collect the boats and tow them in. The

snow came so thickly that they could not see the island

and had to steer by course and compass.

After supper, with the decks cleared and the boys

sitting by the leaping open fire, Elgin himself came in

and sat in the old rocker, talking in his high, eerie

voice, tuned to the storm, as it whistled around the

corner.

"Elgin," said one of the fishermen, "it must be

awful lonely here sometimes, especially in fall and

winter."

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 189

Elgin hunched his chair a little nearer the ruddy-
blaze ; took a look up at the little over-head scaffold far
up in the eaves of the camp, on which were stored the
tin-pails of matches, nails, screw-drivers and other im-
pedimenta of a hunting camp, and began to tell this
story to Amos Fitz, Fred Gross, Ad Pulsifer, Henry
Hanson and other boys gathered around him.

"You remember my friend Hosea that used to come
up here," said Elgin. "He was a spiritualist. He al-
ways said to me, 'Elgin, you bear in mind there is
something in this here spiritualist business and I'm
going to prove it to you!' He used to tell me that if
he died before I did, he would surely come back and
give me some sort of a demonstration of what a husky
spirit realliy is. 'And,' said he, *I won't make no ordi-
nary sort of a demonstration. I will make one hell of
a noise, so that there won't be no doubt about it.
You'll know it when I come.'

"Well, Hosea died over in Bangor, in the summer,
and I staid up here till late fall. Everyone had gone
and I was expectin' the carpenter to come over from
Kineo station to help me close up the houses and camps.
It came up to snow and blow a gale, just about as it is
tonight and he didn't come, so I was all alone on this
big island. And, boys, it blew somethin' awful. The
wind howled around this old camp, woofed down the
chimbley, roared around the corners and shook this
camp something terrific. The fire seemed to act funny ;
kept leapin' up and growin' pale, and the branches
growled against the roof and the winds seemed to be
rattlin' the door and fingerin' the latch, and howlin' like
demons, and the waves sploshed on the beach and a lot
of other sounds mixed in. And I, all alone, I naterally
fell to thinkin' of Hosea."

Elgin paused to let his words sink in and that his
listeners in the camp-fire's light might compare the
description of that night with the wild and ghostly
sounds going on outside.

190 JUBT TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

"I was a rockin' right here and thinkin' of Hosea.
Sez I to myself, 'Ef Hosea was to come, wouldn't he
average to come in on this wind and to the old place
where we used to sit and on such a night as this?
Hosea was a powerful set man! He never said he
would do a thing and failed to make good. He was a
good man and true, and I'm rather feared he'll come
tonight.'

"So I couldn't keep Hosea out of my mind ! I was
a settin' right here," continued Elgin. "I was rockin'
right in this chair. I was thinkin' of the way Hosea
said he would come, with a hell of a noise, when, boys,
just as sure as I am alive, there came right behind me,
floatin' like a streak of white lightnin' out of the ceilin*,
a somethin' that struck the floor within two feet of the
after right hand rocker of this old chair with a bang
that — s-a-a-a-y, well — you never heard no such dam
racket in all your bom days, rip-roaring, tin pans and
clatterin' and hellishness personified breakin* all
records.

"Well, sir, that noise sent a thrill thru me to the
marrer ! It lifted me out of this chair, and turnin*
around, I leaped to my feet and yelled at the top of my
voice, 'My God, Hosea, HAVE you come? Have you
COME?'"

The wind whistled a stave or two of the grave-
digger's lament, over the chimney. Silence sat on the
crowd as with funeral robes. Elgin rocked gloomily,
saying nothing.

"W-w-w-e-1-1," stammered Fred Gross of Auburn,
"was it Hosea?"

"No," said Elgin reflectively as he thought a mo-
ment. "It was a tin pail full of nails and matches that
had been a-settin' on the edge of the scaffoldin' right
up there overhead, and it had come loose by my rockin'
and the wind, and had struck bottom up jest behind my
back ! I ain't never heard nothin' from Hosea since."

ON "PRESERVATION OF THE HOME"

MONG other commissions, we should have one
on families that run to more than one child.
Modern motherhood has taken on vastly
complex phases. In olden days, mother ap-
peared on the scene (out of brief and periodic
absences) with a new babe in arms and let
the forerunners run. In those days the germ was not
in existence; Pasteur had not pessimized us; dirt was
supposed to be healthful and a child was not "doing
well" until it had run thru the gamut of children's
diseases, usually without other medical attendance than
the household "granny" could afford. As for diet!
Well, it was table-food and enough of it.

Nowadays, mother is a little wiser than Solomon
about babies and knows more than Dioscorides about
medicine. If she has two small babies she is a slave.
If she has three, she is a "slavey." If she has four,
she is a martyr, and if she has five, she is a nervous
prostrate, surrounded by winged microbes, influenzas,
croups, malnutritions, adenoids, tonsils, circumcisions,
dentitions, infections, septics, antiseptics, ptomaines,
proteids and heat-units. Her mother probably never
heard of any of them and the Lord protected her and
her brood. The Lord has now abandoned all mothers
and they have nobody left to protect them, poor things,
except the doctors and Uncle Sam.

Children are tyrants, if permitted to be. They are
unreasoning animals — content with what they have,
unless they have too much. Mother's mother had
nothing to give her children but bread and molasses
and a not over-clean kitchen floor, on which to roll to
their dirty little content. Grandmother's baby finger
was besmeared with molasses and a tiny goosefeather
stuck to it and grandmother whiled away her oblivious
infant day, trying to pick off the feather, which be-

192 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

came increasingly difficult as the molasses spread on
her digits. An old-fashioned baby could be tied in a
bushel basket and set on the back door-step, for the
afternoon, with certainty of never a "yip" out of her.
Now she needs to have her adenoids inspected hourly ;
her nutrition weighed minutely on apothecaries' scales ;
her eyes examined by the oculist every afternoon;
while some of these new babies are said to be even born
wearing bifocal lenses on their tiny noses.

So it has become impossible to rear babies, fashion-
ably and scientifically, any longer, without a Federal
Commission to supply what the Red Cross has been
supplying in this war — first aid to dying, starving,
soul-worn motherhood. Few women can live thru the
successful battle against unseen foes, for one child,
much less two or more. Many of them foresee the
issue and leave large families to those who can't afford
to hire child-specialists and therefore can afford to
have babies. The answer to this is : think of the chil-
dren we save by fanning off the germ. The reply to
this is: think of the children we lose by knowing so
much. The pros say "notice the lessening infant mor-
tality." The cons say "notice the decreasing birth-
rate." Give us liberty or give us a Federal Commis-
sion to supply nurses for tired mothers.

Do you know anything that is scarcer than hen's
teeth? Yes! Baby-tenders! I know a woman who
offered this week, $25 a week, board, laundry, an after-
noon out with a ticket to the movies, to a nurse to come
to her home and care for four children for three weeks
while she went to New York to escape going crazy.
She offered it again and again in vain. All seekers for
employment turned the job down and the children are
all healthy, happy, contented little folk, just active, and
yet we hear about organized charities.

So we turn to President Wilson and suggest that as
soon as he makes peace abroad, he come here and make

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 193

peace at home. The soldier in the field has done his bit
and it took ten months. The mother, at home, does
her bit and it takes a lifetime. And nobody talks of
federal aid for her but myself. If infant mortality is to
be kept low, and mothers are to keep up the fight
against unseen foes, Maternalism must join Paternal-
ism in government and jaunty maiden ladies, who have
been driving automobiles or worked for the Red Cross
or knitted and purled in public, must rally to the relief
of their sisters on the firing line of the cradle. We
must have organized central agencies of relief. We
must have organized rest-day planning, for half-crazed
mothers. We must have settlement of increasing per-
plexities of house-keeping. We must have organiza-
tion of cooking and service. We must have intelligent
consideration by the government of how the American
home may be saved ; for as sure as you are a foot high,
it is in danger. We must either have cooks, nurses,
housemaids, or we must give up having babies. We
must have service or else give up the home and turn
the babies over to some germ-proof storehouse for
rearing them.

Either one of these I say (all obnoxious or impos-
sible), or a government of the mothers, by the mothers
and for the mothers, by Federal commission, lest
babies perish from the land.

ON "THE PINE TREE"

HIS tree stands by the sea and on mountains
and speaks a language of the sea. Lowell
says of it : "But the trees all kept their coun-
sel and never a word said they; only there
sighed from the pine-tops a music of seas far
away." If you lie on the brown floor of a pine
wood and look up at them and see the needle points
reaching about, each to his neighbor, and see the

194 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

branches swaying to and fro, you can easily hear the
whispering and it is all of ships and the sea and of the
wind of the salty odor, that passes along. The pines
at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, always seemed to be
talking of the ocean whose breezes stirred them.

"The pines have always been a sea-going family
since first sails were spread," says Maud Going, who
wrote a beautiful book about trees and who quotes
from Reybolles about the pine: "This grand tree,
shooting up like a palm towards the clouds, what is its
fate? Prone and naked in the hands of the ship-
wright ; rising to the stately mast of a ship ; carrying a
flag with all the ideas it represents, to the ends of the
earth." Thus born by the sea, destined to the sea, why
not talk among its branches of the sea, rippling like
silken-gowns or roaring like distant surf on ledges.

The pine tree has a peculiar function among trees,
also. It lives all along the Atlantic coast from far
north to far south and forms a windbreak and barrier
for the more tender, broad-leaved trees that live fur-
ther inland. And yet more strange, they live also
along the Great Lakes and brave the gales there, for
the same valiant purpose. For the gales that sweep
the Maine coast thru the pine and spruce, hemlock and
fir, would tear to tatters the broad-leafed oak or maple
or elm. The evergreens are brave, staunch trees, bear-
ing burdens of snow on their sturdy branches. The
winds slip thru them ; they fling their arms skilfully,
like a boxer in the ring, and they love the cold and the
storm. They are fit emblems for this State of Maine,
that also stands firm, with its jutting headlands against
the piling thunderbolts of the winter storm.

Another thing about the Pine-tree and some of its
brother conifers, is this : it endures easily and proudly
where life is hardest. It is an out-door, two-fisted
tree. It does not matter much to the pine whether
it is in the arid sand or on the sparse soil of the rock-

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 195

bound coast or on mountain-tops, it will endure.
Sometimes in the sand, it will send down tap-roots
thirty feet for moisture. You will find them also on
the flinty scarp of Mount Kineo, clinging to rocks with
roots piercing fissures hardly big enough for the blade
of a pen-knife to enter ; yet exposed to gales that would
rip the life out of a maple. And here the pine stands,
and sings and sings. The pine-tree did not choose this
kind of life. It was naturally a tree of the lush lands,
the river valleys. Here it is so beautiful that one can
well-nigh worship it. Once, the conifer covered the
earth. They were mighty in the land, when all at
once, lo! the broad-leaved trees appeared in immense
number and variety. They were like an invading
army — as when the Saxon invaded England, says one
author, and the wild British fled to swamp, mountain,
desert and barren. So fled the pine by absolute con-
quest of numbers — ^but never dismayed, only made the
stronger and more self-reliant. Some went to the
sands, sending roots deep, so that when burned over,
the pine reappears from its deep sources. The broad
leafed tree can never follow them to their retreats.

The Maine pine once lived in Greece. There, ac-
cording to mythology, it was a lovely maiden, named
Pitys, whom Pan, the player of world-symphonies, on
river reeds, the sweet god Pan, loved. He whispered
to her on the breezes and Boreas heard it — wild Boreas
of the North wind. He also fell in love with Pitys and
declared that no mere piper on small instruments
should have the maid ; so he threw her from the rocks
and the gods caught her just in time to make her into
the Pine.

The winds love the Pine and foster it. All its seed-
ing is done by the wind ; thus it seeds where life is so
cold that bird or insect could not live. You have seen
the pine-pollen in long yellow streaks on ponds. The
pine cone is so wonderful as to deserve a chapter to

196 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

itself. It will make you sure of God; it could not
happen by chance.

Massachusetts put the pine on its coinage. Maine
took it for its symbol — the happiest gift from the
mother state. Our forefathers did not choose it for its
beauty, because along by the sea it is gnarled and
twisted. They chose it because it is an out-post tree,
protecting the weak; because it is rugged and strong;
because it is clean ; because it is ever-green and never-
dead. They chose it because they saw in it an augury
of the people of this State. They chose it because they
hoped we might be as undaunted as the Pine.

ON "TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF
INANIMATE THINGS"

ANY years ago, Edward Everett Hale wrote a
story about a hoop-skirt and how it deliber-
ately and with malice aforethought, defeated
the Southern Confederacy. An old-fashioned
hoop-skirt, out-of-place, was a pure and
highly accomplished type of depravity. Mr.
Hale went farther than this and spoke of "the TOTAL
depravity of inanimate things." One could not satisfy
any of the inclinations of a discarded hoop-skirt.
There was no way of pleasing it. It was totally de-
praved. If you had lived in the days when they were
fashionable, which came along about the time of the
civil war and a few years later, and had been compelled
as a boy to take a hoop-skirt and dispose of it, you
would understand. The hoop-skirt was a series of steel
wires, flattened and thin, highly elastic, laid parallel
and concentric, held together by tapes and worn about
the female form for purpose of sinuous rotundity and
other things. I have nothing to say about what they

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 197

would do when worn. Far be it from me. But I do
know something about them after they were supposed
to be dead and discarded.

For instance, an old hoop-skirt could not be put into
an ash-barrel. If you attempted it, the hoop-skirt
would immediately stick its head up over the top of the
barrel like the sea-serpent from the deeps and would
grasp you in its embrace. You could not burn a hoop-
skirt in a bonfire, for if you tried to do so, the hoop-
skirt would disentangle itself and, released from its
tape, would go cavorting all over the yard and up the
street and snaking it all over the neighborhood, and the
neighbors would say, "There comes one of the X's old
hoop-skirts." You could not bury one of them. Oh,
no. I have seen hoop-skirts that had been buried a
week, rise from their graves and come leaping into the
house. The dynamic power of a bundled up hoop-skirt
was equal to that of a modern depth-bomb. You could
not hang them up in a closet out of the way, for if you
ever entered a closet, the hoop-skirt was ready and
waiting for you. It would grasp you around the neck ;
and you would get your head between the wires and
you were liable to be choked to death or guillotined.
You could not put one of them in a trunk. Oh no,
once more! When you opened that trunk the hoop-
skirt would leap to the ceiling and come down envelop-
ing you. You couldn't throw them in the river, for the
pesky things would catch in the propellors of steam
craft and do damage. Junk men would not buy them.
Ash men would not take them. The only thing pos-
sible was to hang them right side up from the beams
in the upper attic and when the attic was full — ^why,
sell the house.

There are other things, more modern, that have a
certain element of "total depravity of inanimate
things." They have a certain deviltry that seems to
reside in some element of matter, cognate with intellec-

198 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

tuality. Indeed, some of these things seem to think,
exclusively, in terms of mischief. I think I have
spoken of union-suits. I have actually proven that a
union-suit of respectable ancestry and make, will ac-
tually turn wrong side out in the night. I have laid
them absolutely right side up at 10 P.M., signed, sealed,
et cetera, and woke in the morning to find the left leg
where the right ought to be and the seat thereof on the
front porch and the right leg twisted around the neck.
I have almost caught them squirming into mischief in
the night. At present I am driving a nail thru the seat
of mine every evening so as to make sure of finding it
in equilibrium in the morning. And what is worse,
with hoop-skirts, union-suits and so forth, is that they
choose the most unfortunate times for their depraved
doings. The rascals actually THINK. There is no
doubt about it.

Take a shoe-string. Did one of them ever break on
a fine, peaceful, leisurely Sunday morning, when you
had more time than you knew what to do with ? Never.
It looks up into your face innocently, assuringly, on all
leisurely days ; but when you are in a hurry, when the
world depends on your catching the 7.10 train, it
"busts." And it "busts" in a perfectly sound spot.
Take shoes! Did your shoes ever squeak except at a
time w'hen you were compelled to walk up the aisle in
some highly formal gathering with the eyes of every-
body on you — such a place as church — or when sud-
denly called to the platform as third vice-president of
the league to enforce peace. THEY know. Say they :
"This is the time to make this poor old simpleton red in
the face. Let's do it!" When do suspender buttons
burst away in a perfect rain of buttons? At recep-
tions when you are in the receiving line and when you
can't shake hands, hold your wife's bouquet and main-
tain your equatorial respectability with fewer than
four hands.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 199

Don't talk to me — inanimate things think ; and they
are frequently depraved, and highly inclined to prick
the bubble of our self-complacency, reduce swollen
heads and take the conceit out of all men and some
women. In this way they have educational uses.

ON "THE HALF HOUR BEFORE YOU SLEEP"

OW many of us pass for a little while into
another world in the brief half hour before
we go to sleep o' nights? Then there are
visions a plenty, flowering and fading, weav-
ing in and out into a fabric as weird and
impalpable as the far-off curtains of cathe-
drals that we have never entered.

The mind then plays strange tricks with us and
brings out of its recesses all sorts of ghosts that we
thought were long since laid. They are, as someone
has said, "like old daguerreotypes that shine out with
unexpected vividness from their cases," visions of old
houses "where dwells a ghost of yesterday, of a girl,
now half a century dead, of lovers who kiss a while;
then, drowsily, the mists blow round them wan, and
they, like ghosts, are gone."

There are certain places in my mind that keep com-
ing up every now and then, and have done so for forty
years. They are the most commonplace incidents of
boyhood life — a path that led up past a fence, by the
side of a stone-pit, up a very narrow shelf of rock, to a
hill-top and then a western view that is set with an old
oak tree and a frog pond. Whenever I think of this, a
train of reminiscence is set up and immediately I think
of Prester John. Now why in the world should one
think of that mysterious party of olden traditions
when this place comes to mind ? But never do I think
of this on the hill-top ; for, having arrived there, I think

200 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

of the Tower of London and Eliot, Pym and Raleigh
and all of the rest of that busy breed of men who were
headed mostly toward the final home of England's
brains, in those days.

I have never cared to ask other people if they were
bothered with the persistent return, night after night,
of these strange old places. Each of them leads to a
definite train of thought. For instance, if I think of a
certain nook where I used to lie of a summer afternoon
and listen to the waves under the piers, I bring in an-
other train of thought and especially of old sea rovers.
The reason of this is natural enough, but why Prester
John and old romances because I start in my mind to
crawl dangerously and painfully up that narrow ledge
of rock to the old hill-top?

Of course there are times in everyone's dreaming —
consciously dreaming — when there are visions that
seem to come plainly from one's past. With everyone
the old imagery appears. I often see myself as a
ragged boy walking thru strange places that I have
never visited and never shall in this world. What are
they? Are they evidences of some other existence,
some pre-natal life — or just fancies? Perhaps you
have seen, as I have seen, places that seemed to have
been visited before; heard things that you seemed to
have heard in some previous existence and especially in
this mystic half hour when the soul is about to take
wings and fly away, does one stand at the portals and
peer into the other world?

Certain lines of reading also cause familiar scenes
of childhood to intervene between me and the pages.
There is a certain lonely old house, that keeps con-
stantly in my mind. I have no association with it;
was never inside of it ; know nothing about it ; can see
only its old battered stove pipe, leaning tipsy-like to
one side. I have been reading the story of Ghengis

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 201

Khan and all of the time crawling over the rafters of
an old, abandoned stone-crusher where we used to revel
as a lot of boys will do in any abandoned property.

"I have killed the moth," says the poet, "flying
around my night-light, but who will kill the time-moth
that eats holes in my soul and that burrows thru and
thru my secretest veils. . . . Who will shatter the
Change-Moth that leaves me in rags — tattered old
tapestries that swing in the winds that blow out of
Chaos. Night-Moth, Change-Moth, Time-Moth, eaters
of dreams and of me." You talk materialism when
you cannot understand why your soul plays such
pranks with you. You talk materialism when face to
face with the Change that touches all of us as with the
death of the moth ! Better solve the things that may
be, in the half-hour before you go to sleep, than answer
so many questions about the things that are !

ON "THE OLD COUNTRY BRASS-BAND"

NEVER played in a brass band, but my uncle
did and I always went to hear him. He
played a bass horn. His name was Uncle
George. When he was not playing in the
band — he played seldom — he ran a country
store and sold everything from gunpowder
to molasses. He could not keep, therefore, a first-class
bass-horn lip. And after he had juggled a half-dozen
mowing machines and handled a ton or two of bar-iron
and steel, his fingers were not very nimble on "Comin'
thru the Rye."

The band reorganized once a year, in July. Its
purpose was to run an excursion on the "fast and safe
ocean-going barge 'Yosemite' to Boothbay Harbor or
Fort Popham, with music by the Bowdoinham Brass

202 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Band." It took about two weeks for the band to get
up its personnel and its lip. It met in the Grand Army-
hall for rehearsals. There were two things that filled
a boy's heart with glee — when the fire-engine played
once a month, and when the band was getting ready for
its annual excursion. One was as wet as the other.

The band always played a piece called "The Basso's
Pride." My Uncle George was the basso and the pride
was all his. It consisted of a solo of three grunts and
a dying wail. That is the way it struck me. When-
ever the band approached this tour de force of Uncle
George, my heart stopped and did no business. Uncle
George would lay down his basso ; look around to see if
the crowd was watching and that all was still ; he would
pick up his horn, get inside of it; then his eyeballs
would begin to stick out and out and out; his back
would arch like a tom-cat in a fight; his hair would
rise and then with tremecndous power would emit
'Toom-pah — Poom-pah ! Ugh-ugh-ugh ! P-o-o-m-pah !
Ugh-ugh-woof ! Um-pah-" and then "do-re-mi ! Oom-
pah." And then his eyeballs would recede and his hair
fall and he would stop and take down his bass-horn
and wipe his brow. The solo was over; the liquid
melodies were no more. "The Basso's Pride" was
ended. It was, indeed, beautiful.

I liked to see the band assemble on the morning of
the excursion. It came from "The Ridge ;" "Abbakill-
dassett," Carter's Corner and the Landing. They
rarely got over eighteen out, with instruments, includ-
ing a boy with cymbals. The uniform was architec-
turally abrupt. It was cut before it shrunk. I have
seen pants that musically speaking were arpeggio.
In other words the legs were arpeggio — not cut simul-
taneously. They were coloraturo in a large and sym-
pathetic way ; red caps ; blue coats ; green pants and
yellow trimmings — a sort of passionate uniform inten-
sifying the atmosphere of the players. When you

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 203

heard the band play one of its three tunes — ^the "Girl I
Left Behind Me," which they always played as the
noble "Yosemite" swung into the restricted Cathance,
you felt so darn bad about the girls that you forgot
the music.

The E-flat cornet player was red-headed. His red
cap and his red hair and his red face and his freckles
made me very much concerned for spontaneous com-
bustion. He played con expressione. When he arose
to give the preliminary warble for a tune he went thru
some gymnastics, believe me. He literally girded his
loins for battle. He tested the compression in his
cornet by blowing thru the air vent in the side. Then
he thumped it up against the railing of the barge
"Yosemite" to see if some bad little boy had put a
doughnut in the bell. Then he blew in the mouth a
little easy to see if the suction was all right and she
could get her gas. Then he patted the side of the
comet and "over it softly his warm ear laid" to get
the music of the corn-fields and the summer winds.
Then he lifted his head eager, alert, majestic, and
maestro-like. And then would swell out "The Basso's
Pride" aforesaid.

People came for miles to hear that parting tune.
It was the mingled sweetness of barnyard, hayfield,
grocery-store and all the financial institutions of the
town, viz., the cashier of the bank. Uncle George did
his darndest. Superhuman sounds led up to the bass-
solo. Chords never heard on land, but reserved for
storms at sea swelled over the placid Cathance and the
shores took up the echoes. The clarinet wailed and
the drums rattled and roared. The altos altoed on
their toes and the piccolo squealed like a storm thru
the lee braces. And then lo! It was still! As still
as tho someone had said "Peace!" and then Uncle
George had the floor.

204 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I can see nothing but his eyeballs gradually
emerging from his countenance ; and hear nothing now,
but that glorious "Oom-pah!" Four notes this time
and a dying grunt. Nothing ever surpassed it;
nothing ever will. Uncle George should have been a
bass-soloist and nothing else!

ON "MORE ON THE OLD BRASS BAND"

HE OLD country band still echoes down the
corridors of time, especially in my corre-
spondence. Every day or two some one
writes me about the old Bowdoinham band, in
terms of reminiscence, sweet and suggestive.
Yesterday, a letter came from Wellesley,
Mass., about the old Bowdoinham Band and I would
enjoy other reminiscences of similar nature about
other old country bands, for they seem as music "faint
and clear" from other days.

This friend says that after my Uncle George was
compelled to give over the solo part of "The Basso's
Pride," on account of his business, rather than because
of any lack of lip or artistry, he was replaced by a local
barber named Evander ("Van") Thomas, who under-
took the bass-horn. "Van" not only did the village
barbering, but he also sold confectionery, cigars, ice-
cream, lemonade and hair-restorer. Van would come
direct from a shave or a hair-cut and serve you a lemon-
ade or an ice-cream; so that his delicatessen was not
always bald-headed. But as he said, playfully, "We
charge nothing extra for hairs in the lemonade." I can
remember him well, for he cut my hair once; and I
recall that at the time he was studying a piece of music
set on the shelf under the looking-glass, meanwhile he
snipped off portions of my scalp and ears. But as he
said, "I will make it the same price and not charge you
anything for the extra close cut." He was a fair and
generous barber.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 205

Van's musical capacity was, of course, not within
my ken, but my Wellesley friend says "it was marvel-
ous, for Van had no idea of time." If the band started
off before he was ready (i.e., before he had spit and got-
ten his head thru the hole in the horn), he could not
find the place on the music. All he could do was to begin
at the beginning and do his best to catch up. Usually
he came out about eight "oom-pah's" behind and Van
never omitted one of them. He played his whole piece
from beginning to end. In other words, he "done his
full duty."

Another character was Henry Williams. He had
played the fife in the Civil War. He also chawed
tobacco and drooled a lot. His notes were, therefore,
liquid. It was a wonder how he could chew tobacco,
hold his quid and play "Marchin' Through Georgia" at
the same time. Henry has long since been gathered to
his fathers. Peace to his ashes. He is probably now
playing the flute by the side of the River of Life, and a
golden flute, too, with, we trust, a complete plumbing
and sewer system attached.

William Douglass was the snare drummer of this
band. Mr. Douglass has long since passed on, so that
it may do no harm to refer to his personal appearance.
He was over six feet tall, very spare, as one-sided as a
postman and gifted with a very large musical and ex-
ternal ear — in fact, a pair of them. My Wellesley
friend says that William's ears had neither "serrations
nor corrugations," but had a well-defined cartilage run
thru the outer edge like the string thru a pair of paja-
mas to keep them from falling. There is no greater
physical trouble than "falling of the ears." John Bib-
ber, who used to live in Bowdoinham, said that William
could lie down in one ear and cover himself up with the
other. Now, of course every reader knows that when
a band starts out to march, it has method. The leader
gives one toot on his horn; waits two or three beats

206 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

according as the time be three-four or four-four, and
then he gives two toots and then the snare drummer
(I'd give my scanty hope of heaven to be a boy again
and a snare drummer in a band) must roll the drum
for one or two half-measures, winding up with two
staccato beats and then *'Hoop-la ! Away they go !
Basses grunting, piccolos squealing, cornets boasting,
clarinets singing, drums rum-tumming." Everybody
marching away, left foot f or'rard !

William was a moderate thinker and mover. His
transmission was poor. The preliminary toot usually
found William unready and three to five measures be-
hind. So the band would start off, some marching,
some playing, some waiting and the leader would toot
a reverse action and Mr. Douglass would roll the drum
about ten measures to the rear ; and Van would lose his
place and start off way behind and Henry Williams
would lose his warble and yet we all would say "What
lovely music." It was lovely. I swear it.

There was once a drum corps in Harpswell that was
made up of a one-armed bass-drummer and three hare-
lipped fifers. My Wellesley friend says that when
they played "Marching Through Georgia," it sounded
like an echo from the caves of Aeolus, where they breed
wind.

WHEN BEUNDA SPEAKS A PIECE"

HE following lines were read at a Christmas
Tree in Auburn, as the outcome of an excel-
lent recitation on Christmas Eve, by the little
girl referred to. It is true that the reflex
action of the giggling nerve of the little girl
did interrupt the recitation for about ten
minutes, in which the audience was affected similarly
and all gave way to the contagion ; but under the stimu-
lus of a promised dollar in thrift-stamps, the little girl

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 207

rounded to and accomplished her task. It shows how-
coin can conquer even cachination. The lines sub-
joined were written immediately after the affair and
were read at the presentation of the thrift-stamps on
the following day :

'Twas the night before Christmas, when Belinda got

ready
To speak her swell piece before going to beddy,
Her eyes shone like stars and the hair on her heady
Stood out round her ears like a rain of confetti.
When the folks were all gathered, her Uncle Bill,

said-he
"Now, Belinda, begin; and keep your face steady."

So she drew in her feet and placed them just straight,
Tucked her fingers and thumbs in her gown at the plait.
And she lifted her chin and gazed straight at the

ceiling
And prepared to recite, with expression and feeling ;
And her face like a rose, with never a smirch
She drew up like a Deacon, just going to church.
And she stood up so straight, with never a wiggle.
You'd have said, "Here's a child that simply CAN'T

giggle."

But — giggles just live in a little girl's skin.

They hide in the dimples, just over her chin,

And they play in the pastures where happiness lies

Just under the lashes that shelter her eyes.

And they always go romping and cutting up shines

When a good little girl is reciting her lines.

Try as hard as she can to keep her face straight

The giggles will come; just as sure as the fate.

When Belinda had arrived at "Not Even a Mouse"
The giggles came out, each as big as a house.
And they popped out of her dimples and tickled her
nose

208 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

And they danced on her ears and they wiggled her toes,
And they twinkled her eyes and they waggled her chin
And they ran out 'round the room and they ran back

again,
And by the time that old Santa, with his "little round

belly"
Had begun to woggle it round "like a bowl full of jelly,"
The giggles caught mamma "Ha ! Ha !" with a POP !
And we roared and we laughed till we never could

stop.

Oh! That was a merry and jolly old piece

"Ha ! Ha ! and Ho ! Ho ! till we never could cease ;

He ! Hee ! and Hi ! Hi ! Haw ! Haw ! and Whoo ! Whoo !

With giggles and shouting and hullaballoo.

"Oh-h-h dear and Oh m-y ! What a pain in my side."

And we laughed and we laughed till we like to have

died;
Till the giggles got tired and ran back to their cave
And Belinda's face straightened and once more grew

grave,
And she straightened her toes and got her mouth right,
For : "Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night."

MORAL (spoken by donor of the dollar) :
"I made a trade with Belinda

Which giggles cannot hinder.
To wit: If she would "speak"

She'd get a dollar, Christmas week ;
She has made her holler,

Here's her dollar."

ON "GERMANY'S RECONSTRUCTION"

FIND in the book of James M. Beck, that
ardent friend and admirer of Theodore
Roosevelt, which is called "The Reckoning,"
so many things such as I have recently at-
tempted to put over in regard to salving the
German people, that amid the tumult and the
shouting of "hate," I begin to feel like a prophet.

Mr. Beck once had a wonderfully lucid controversy
with Dr. Kuna Francke on the subject of regeneration
of the German people and their adaptation to a more
liberal form of government, in which Francke argued
that the German people were indissolubly wedded to
their mediaeval despotism, altho he thought that inter-
nal reforms might make the Imperial will more respon-
sive to the popular will.

But how events scatter arguments to the winds!
And how often racial interests and pride warp man's
judgment. Let us beware of falling into the same pit.
Others standing afar often see things more clearly
than such as Francke. For instance, Mr. Beck calls at-
tention to a Portuguese poet, Eca de Queiroz, who said
something twenty-eight years ago that was prophetic
and wonderful. Queiroz suggested then that the Em-
peror's assumption of divine inspiration, which is at
the root of Germany's downfall and disgrace, carried
the fatal disadvantage that, in the hour when Germany
met disaster, the people would conclude that the Kais-
er's much-vaunted alliance with God was the trick of a
wily despot. That the German people ever accepted
such claim to divine inspiration was one of the humor-
ous phenomena of the ages. Even the courtiers of
Caligula laughed at his claims to divine inspiration.
How did Germany ever fall for such a doctrine ? Only
as forced to learn it at the mother's breast.

210 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Queiroz wrote this 28 years ago: "Then will there
not be stones enough from Lorraine to Pomerania to
stone this counterfeit Moses. William II is in very-
truth casting against fate those terrible Iron dice,' to
which the now-forgotten Bismarck once alluded. If he
win he may have within and without the frontiers,
altars such as were raised to Augustus ; should he lose,
exile, the traditional exile in England awaits him — a
degraded exile, the exile which he so sternly threatens
to those who deny his infallibility. M. Renan is there-
fore right; there is nothing more attractive at this
period of the century than to witness the final develop-
ment of William II. In the course of years, this youth,
ardent, pleasing, fertile in imagination, of sincere and
perhaps heroic soul, may be sitting in calm majesty in
his Berlin schloss presiding over the destinies of
Europe — or may be in the Hotel Metropole in London,
sadly unpacking from the exile's handbag, the battered
double crown of Prussia and Germany."

All this goes back to William's blasphemous as-
sumption of divinity and the teaching of it to his
people. But a people that has had the mediaeval his-
tory of Germany, is bound to recover from such folly.
From an opposition of 312,000 votes in 1881, cast in
direct defiance of the Emperor's edict, there were
4,238,919 recorded votes of this calibre in 1912. Is this
acquiescence ? Are we giving enough credit to the sub-
merged "saving remnant" that was obliged to fight for
the land in order to have something to save ?

I am no sentimentalist about this thing. The Ger-
man Terror was real and awful. History has never
known its like before. But was it German ? We want
to know. Or was it a projection of that people into a
land of Moloch, into an insane orgie of blood fed by
high priests wearing the garb of nobility and power?
Was it not due also to a governmental press, the
greatest curse of Germany next to the Hohenzollerns ;

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 211

the obliteration of freedom of speech and the printing
machine; the prostitution of schools and pulpits that
misled these people and from which we must rescue
them?

Years ago Longfellow wrote : "Not thy councils and
thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; but thy
painter, Albrecht Durer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler
bard." Those days may return. "Ever the fiery
Pentecost girds with one flame the countless host."
This Pentecost is not for you or me alone, but for all.
The reconstruction of Germany is the great problem of
the time and that reconstruction must be for a peace-
ful nation, a United States of Germany that shall for-
ever hate war and have no means of prosecuting it for
many, many generations to come.

ON "CAPPING THE MAIN TRUCK"

EARS ago the tall square-riggers used to rear
their slender masts above my native city of
Bath, Maine. The riggers worked on them
getting them ready for the sea. Queer, old-
fashioned sailormen were these riggers, all of
whom had sailed many a time across the
Western ocean as well as the other six of the seven
seas. I can hear them now, with their deep sea chan-
ties, "Way Down Rio," "Blow a Man Down," "Biscay,
O!" and many more, that linger only as faint memo-
ries of music, long forgot. One sturdy, tarry man, I
can see now, and his voice I yet can hear across the
years, rolling above the tide down the river, up the
river, head-chanteyman was he!

Boys of Bath used to infest — I use the word after
due consideration — used to infest the ships as they lay
at the wharves making ready for sailing off to sea,
never to return. We swarmed over them, down in the
holds, in the dark places along the keelson; between

212 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

decks where the ship smelled of tarred rope and of the
hard-pine; thru the forecastle and the after-cabins,
here and there as we willed, provided we kept out of
the way ; and often we were given a chance to take a
turn on the huge capstan-bars and help a crew warp up
a main yard to the music of a chantey.

But there was one thing that no boy who frequented
ships could escape, and that was no "duty" either. It
was a custom, a tradition, a sentimental journey per-
formed by boys from early days ; a test of courage and
of high appeal to adventure. And that was "capping
the main-truck." It must not be the truck of the fore-
mast or the mizzenmast, but the truck of the mainmast
— the tiny ball that rests on the tip of the mast, thru
which the flag-halliards run. Each boy who had the
privilege of boys on ship-board as the craft lay rigging
at the wharf, must do the stunt or be forever disbarred
from the society of the boy of daring and of spunk.
"Coward" and worse were the anathemas toward that
boy forever after among the boys — and the riggers
were not slow in helping on the custom, either.

I have often thought of that duty in years since
then — mother's little boy daring an adventure that
might well test many a man of courage and derring-do,
hazardous and not to be approved nowadays. Fairly
piercing the skies, lifted the taper-like masts, swaying
in the winds, rocking to the wave, over the dark, swift-
running tide and the cruel deck below, littered with its
machinery and pierced by its open hatches. If other
boys were like me, it was no place for mother's little
fair-haired boy of fourteen. Many a boy who went the
way up the tall masts, did a feat as great as going over
the top — and what is more, he did it purely on his own
courage, not in the company of others, giving him sup-
port. I can seem to see myself, very tiny in those
days, quite as another person, given the test, reaching
into the main shrouds and climbing the ratlines to the

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 213

lubber-hole — a pathetic picture, surely, if he looked as
he felt, full of fear and yet ever going on. Some boys
took to the lubber- hole — but it was only an evasion,
not the fullest victory, so, out he swings over the deck
almost horizontal and up over the crest to the first
landing place on the main cross-trees. Up here the
wind blows about his flapping little knee-breeches.
Surely mother would be frightened now. Far above
rises the tiny ball of gold, almost in the infinite blue.
He well may pray for help ; for no boy will call him back
or say "that's enough." He simply MUST go on. He
never knows how he did it — parched mouth, beating
heart, trembling knees, ringing ears, little hands fairly
sinking into each rope with the energy of fear ; and at
length he stands pressed against the ropes, in panic,
at the second station of his journey.

No boy knows how he did it the first time. He only
knows that he went on and on and on and finally
reached the goal ; putting his little cap on the gold ball ;
waving it over the earth and the river and the tiny fig-
ures below, whose cheers came faintly up to the dizzy
height. He has a distinct memory of looking over the
city; down the river toward the sea and hearing his
beating heart, in rapture at accomplishment, and feel-
ing himself say to the little chap whose soul had seem-
ingly been separated from his physical body, "Good
Boy ! You have done it." And that boy was I.

What was it good for? I will tell you. It was ac-
complishment. It was forcing the body to yield to the
soul. It was compelling fear to give over to superior
force. It was teaching a boy never to say "I can't;"
but rather, "I will." It was putting him into the class
of those who "do things." It was initiation into the
society of the American Boy. Many a time, since
then, when I have faced difficulties that seemed un-
surmountable as that mast, I have said to myself
proudly, "I capped the Main Truck." I can do this
thing also !

ON "HAUNTED ROOMS"

HAVE memories of a little old room, in a little
old house that I roamed thru as a child,
touching here and there sacred things, tim-
idly and as a wayward child, forbidden of the
spot, as once, indeed, I was.

The pictures on the wall shine dimly, and
I see them not so plainly as I see the oval glass globe
with the wax-flowers in it, the full-rigged tiny ship
that sat on the old marble-topped table, and I can smell,
too, the faint, musty odors of a closed room and the
far-off scent of lavender and see the light struggling in
thru the blinds that shut out the sun from fading the
old ingrain carpet.

This room, so common to old homes in New Eng-
land, was the parlor, with never a use except its setting
aside for great happenings, connected with death, re-
ligion, ministers, and visits from personages. Its stiff-
legged cane-seat chairs, its hair-cloth sofa, its rocker
with the silk tatting pinned to its hair-cloth back, the
carved teeth of the walrus or the whale on the mantel,
the old-fashioned floral-emblem autograph albums, its
holy Bible on the center table — this was a sanctuary
that no child could profane except, as Bluebeard's little
boy, liable to find the heads of other adventurous little
boys, hanging to the hooks of the closet, therein. Ah
me ! The story of the old parlors ! I have seen them
once or twice opened for the wedding — ^but in those
days, every daughter preferred to be wedded under the
apple-trees; but never was an ancestor "laid out" in
other place. And so the old parlor brings back nothing
else so plain as cold, still forms quiet in there, with
little feet of strange-eyed children tiptoeing in to gaze
on the face shrunken, and unnatural, amid the scent of
old-fashioned flowers. Tiny form, too, in little white
dresses and with golden hair around their faces, once

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 215

tossing about the place in play, little feet, so soon
stayed in the race of life! "In the dim chamber,
whence but yesterday passed my beloved, filled with
awe I stand, and haunting loves fluttering on every
hand whisper her praises who is far away," said John
Hay. And it is all very true, of old parlors.

Very like haunted rooms in the memory are they.
Full of strange, half-forgotten things. I doubt not
every person who does me the honor of reading this has
one of these rooms in memory if he be fifty years of
age. They were the tribute of our fathers to social cus-
tom, the deference paid to the solemnities of life. To
come into being! It might happen anywhere. To go
from life — equally so. But the last memorial must
have a place to fit the occasion. And so they set aside
the best for this last. Here also all ultimate treasures
of life went. Here the strange things that came from
overseas, especially in seaport towns, were stored; the
prized oflferings brought with care from the far East in
ships by those long since dead. The housewife her-
self rarely stepped within its portals and then only for
careful dusting and in search of the evasive moth,
which might corrupt. Here she looked with pride
upon her best hoarding; on works of art, of doubtful
value, that, to her, satisfied the longing of a soul that
sought better things than kitchen or pantry could
afford. Here she locked her woman's heart. Here
she hung her best dress; here she kept her wedding
secrets; her sentiment unrevealed; her womanly
dreams ; her romances ; her visions ; all her memories of
herself as a girl-bride. Here grandmothers came
sometimes and wept. Here all mourning was done for
death, the room being opened in sorrow, as the upper
chamber, in which wept the father, for his son
Absalom.

Haunted rooms! How many of them have you?
All rooms of tragedy, in life and death — the places

216 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

where souls have passed, where life has come, where
weddings have been, where the little white bassinet
has stood, where the first-born has started on the long
journey most quietly. She is very little and the roads
are lying in wait for her stirring feet. You never for-
get the scene. It is full of pictures, of the sun on the
floor, the firelight playing from the fire-place, the
flowers in the vase, the evening lamp !

And so, tonight, I am approaching once again the
little old parlor. I turn the knob and peer within. It
is dark and still. The light from the other room
streams over the threshhold. Do I hear the voices of
them who once were there! Maybe. But I am not
; fraid. I am but happy, if so it be.

ON "LOVING THE SCHOOLMARM"

OU have been in love, but you never loved any-
one as you did a certain schoolmarm when
you were a shock-ihaired, freckle-faced school-
boy a good many years ago. Some of them
you hated from the first with a fierce and
consuming hate, but one of them you fell for
and you loved — oh, how you loved her.

Ten to one she was fat and had red cheeks and
smooth hair and her figure ! Ye gods ! What a figger !
When she came into school for the first time your
heart stood still. You were consumed with passion!
You could not see straight. You couldn't recite ! You
couldn't read — you couldn't think. Here was Venus —
only you didn't know anything about any Venuses; —
here was Hebe and Ganymede. Here was Cleopatra
and Helen of Troy. Here was your chance! If you
were very good and noble and brave perhaps she would
fall in love with you and then no knowing what might
happen. You loved her.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 217

There is no adoration like the boy-love, aged ten to
thirteen. It dares all heights, even twenty-eight years
of maidenhood. It is probable that she was bordering
on the bank of thirty years — when the maid steps over
the brink into old-maid terrain. As for you, she was
just right. She was your fate if you could only
impress the fact on her that you were a very unusual
boy. You would study hard ; graduate in a very short
time; save her life from a runaway horse; or thru a
hole in the ice; or you would go to sea and be gone a
few weeks and come home with several million dollars
and then you would clasp her in your arms and would
whisper love to her and she would be yours. Or you
would become a great general in some war and win her
from the enemy and the wedding would be attended
by all of the nobility.

You are really doing very well. You have begun to
study. She notices it and sends you on errands, her
dulcet voice setting your heart to thumping tremend-
ously as she calls out, "William! Please come for-
ward." You have no doubt for the instant that she
will propose elopement, then and there, conquered by
your manly graces. She wants you to take a note to
some other teacher in some other school. You go on
tip-toes and do not stop on the way. Things are
coming along. You keep on dreaming. You will find
her out some night helpless, in the fierce winter
storm. She will be lying exhausted in the snow and
you will be coming along; tripping gaily thru the five-
foot drifts, brushing the snows away like a rotary plow.
You will see her fair form reclining before you. You
will lift her 187 pounds like a feather — you who weigh
73 lbs. You will carry her fainting thru the storm.
She will be rescued. Nothing doing but wedlock.

If you can be called to the front for some minor
offense and get a seat under the schoolmarm's desk —
it is not so bad. Good behavior does not seem to bring

218 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

about the wedding-bells, so you will be a devil. You
can get the seat all right. There is usually a waiting-
list under the schoolmarm's desk. But you are per-
sistent and you get there. It is dusty but you are near
her. You become careless in your lessons. You get
a licking from her. Excellent ! Never hurt a bit. A
whaling from those fair hands — a pastime! Come
again. A man can't be bothered with arithmetic when
passion storms thru his veins like a roaring flame thru
a burning city. It is tragedy. Many a boy has known
it — schoolmarms with plump figures, neat shoes and
spring gowns having no conception of the amorous-
ness flaming around them in evil-smelling boys. You get
morose at home. Nobody understands you. Your
father and mother don't understand you. You are
about tired with life anyway. Something has got to
happen pretty darn quick.

And it does happen. Some day a red-headed
farmer comes to school and calls for the schoolmarm
with a red sleigh and a good stepping horse. She
blushes all over. He gets her to let school out earlier.
He carts her off. Another boy says, "It's her feller."
He knew. You contemplate suicide vigorously. Next
day when she licks you you kick at her shins — those
erstwhile darling shins garbed in white. Hooray!
It is all over and you are redeemed. You are again
happy. You hate the teacher. Now for study and fun !

ON "THE DOG ON THE BRIDGE"

DOG was coming over North Bridge in Lewis-
ton yesterday noon. I say he was coming —
he was not coming very fast because he was
afraid. He was a fine-looking, long-eared
hound, and as he walked along the bridge, his
eyes caught the gleam of the river far below
thru the cracks between the planking, and at once, to
his eyes, the cracks widened and the boards narrowed
and there he was hanging, between life and death, as
he saw it, crouching and whining and picking his way
from plank to plank.

It was all a matter of perspective. The dog had
his nose and eyes too near to the ground. He failed
of a proper angle of observation. A young woman
passed us as I was trying to toll the dog along. Her
head was high. She wore ear-rings ; had golden hair ;
was looking pretty fine, thank you; marching off in
short skirts and greenish yellow hose all the world like
a couple of inverted Poland Water bottles. She never
saw any river under the bridge. The poor dog could
see nothing else.

We get a great deal of worry by not looking at
things in a larger way than we sometimes do. If you
hold a silver dollar up close to your eye, you can see
nothing but the dollar. If you hold a doughnut up
against your eye, hole in front, you miss the doughnut.
There is a great art in life in focusing your troubles as
well as your joys. It is better to look at a wild beast
from a distance than to go up and look him in the eye.
He may run off and never come your way, in the first
case. In the second case, he may bite you. A lion in
the offing is not the whole world. A lion in arms, tail
up, six feet away, may be the end of the world.

And further — what a folly to see things only as
things. The dog saw the water, but not in relation to

220 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the bridge nor did he see the bridge in relation to the
safe conduct of society across the river. There are
many people whom this war has made ill by mere fore-
boding. I do not mean those who have loved ones in
danger — that is another matter. I refer to those
persons who see nothing in the war but the water
flowing under the bridge ; nothing but the distance that
the world may plunge. They have their eyes too close
to the war. They should see that the war is a fore-
ordained end of a wicked philosophy — the philosophy
of the Superman. They should see that in the great
movement of world evolution, this war is but a chap-
ter— the chapter of regeneration and readjustment.
They should see that it is not the end of society, but
the beginning of a new society, better than the old.
Terrible as it is, we must not look at it as of this age
only. It is the medicine of a world that is to endure
thruout the ages.

You may apply this plan in every-day life very
sensibly. Half of the troubles that men and women
get into are from not lifting their heads and looking
over the situation before they decide to boil over with
anger. In all quarrels there are two sides. Try to see
them both. We get into a lot of difficulty by pre-
judging the motives of others. We make a lot of
mistakes by deciding for ourselves how other people
are likely to decide for themselves. We may well
decide to look about a bit ; see what is under our feet ;
feel the tread of the planks under us ; watch the yellow-
haired girls marching bravely on ; consider that if you
fall you will have to crawl thru a pretty small crack
and let it go at that, with an appeal to the best judg-
ment you have.

But whatever you do, get your perspective. Do not
blind yourselves with troubles or fool yourselves look-
ing thru the hole in the doughnut. It takes equanimity
to preserve equilibrium.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 221

And after the dog got off the bridge, he barked and
capered and ran away like the wind. You see! He
had been delayed on his journey by his fancied
troubles. If you see the point — it's yours, gratis.

ON "WOMAN"

INCE one may never foresee all of the state-
ments of a woman, the wisest policy is not
to take the trouble to see any of them.
Woman's cruelest revenge is often to remain
faithful to a man. Women should remem-
ber their origin and constantly think of
themselves as a supernumerary bone. As women
always know their own greatness, it is their smallness
that we should divine. A woman's logic is remarkable
in its simplicity; it consists in expressing one idea
only one eye, but she had a great heart.

A man tells what he knows, a woman tells what is
pleasing; a man talks with knowledge, a woman talks
with taste. A man never knows how to live until a
woman has lived with him. The Queen of Sheba had
only one eye, but she had a great heart.

"I shall not decide what is the first merit of woman ;
but ordinarily the first question which is asked about
woman is, "Is she beautiful?" The second, "Has she
wit?" There is nothing good about woman, except
what is best in her. A woman may be homely, ill-
shaped, ignorant, but ridiculous, never. A woman
betrays you, she kills you, but she cries for you. Yet
woman is the crime of man ! She has been his victim
since Eden. She wears on her flesh the trace of six
thousand years. There are women who have made
themselves miserable for life, for a man whom they
have ceased to love, because he has badly cut his nails
or badly taken off his coat in company. A man is
therefore responsible for his entire wife.

222 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

The one who may govern a woman, may govern a
nation. Yet you should have a horror of instruction
of woman for the reason so well understood in Spain,
that it is easier to govern a people of idiots than a
people of learned men. Politics in married life con-
sists of three principles: The first is, never believe
what a woman says; second, try to understand the
spirit of her actions; and third, do not forget that a
woman is never so talkative as when she keeps silent,
and never so active as when she is at rest. Women
possess better than men the art of analyzing the two
human sentimeuts with which they are armed against
us. They have the instinct of love, because it is their
life, and of jealousy because it is the only means which
they have to rule over us. And yet the first and most
important quality of woman is sweetness. All of the
reasons of a man are not worth one sentiment from a
woman. A homely woman, who is also good, is an
angel and should be beatified. A beautiful woman,
who is also good, should have four pairs of wings and
two motors. A homely woman may be wicked, but she
is never silly about it. And a beautiful woman can
never be silly, provided the man is sufficiently in love.
Beauty covers a multitude of sins.

As to woman's wisdom! Women should never be
permitted to go to church. What sort of conversation
can they hold with God? In what way are women in-
ferior to men? Is it not the fact that they shook
before him the tree of science? The Greeks who
created all the gods, symbolized wisdom by Minerva.
Atheism is the horizon of bad consciences. There
never was a woman atheist. Thanks to Eve, who
shook the tree of science, women know everything
without having learned anything. In wisdom, all of
the Eves and Magdalenes are novels of which one
should read only the prefaces. To read all the chap-
ters would take too long. To skip pages is risky. Yet
one who has read the book called woman, knows more

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 223

than the one who has grown pale in libraries. Ulti-
mately, woman is the reason of man. If it be woman
who shows the way to heaven, it is woman who makes
one love earth. And nevertheless, there are women
who are only gowns. What are you going to do about
it? Keep a bulldog?

And of woman's love, a million words would be but
as one, compared to the words written of it. On the
maternal bosom, rest the wit of nations, their preju-
dices and their virtues — in other words, human civili-
zation. In the thought of God there are only two
vvomen to be involved in the life of a man: his mother
and the mother of his children. Many women live
and die by the heart. There are men ; there is woman.
Woman is queen of creation. A woman's real love is
like piety. It comes late in life. A woman is rarely
devout or in love at twenty. Women wish to be loved ;
and when they are, they are often annoyed or worse.
They flirt; to flirt is to love, in water-colors. Love is
poetry, but marriage is an exact science. Some women
marry from tradition and then wake up to find it per-
dition. If you are going to love, pass up your judg-
ment. Finally, woman and her love and all that, are
the Alpha and the Omega, hell and paradise, good and
evil, the fall and the redemption.

There ! Think over that. It is strictly a collabora-
tion, out of my note book, culled from reading and
selection. Each of them is an epigram. They are
strung together, like pearls and paste, on the same
string. They are good and bad indifferently. A few
of them I wrote myself. They are no worse or better
than the others. And probably no more or less true.
If you sniff at any one of them remember, you may be
sniffing at Baudelaire, or Anatole France, or Paul
Sabatier, or Voltaire, or Jean Jaques, the old dear; or
at Ben Franklin, or at Thackeray, or at Solomon, or at
the Book of Judges. So bear with me for a bit of fun ;
and tomorrow, I will write strictly of moral things.

ON "GIVING ADVICE, GRATIS"

LADY friend of mine is in trouble. She went
to the doctor the other day for purposes of
pulchritude. She is a comely lady, anyway,
and needn't have worried.

But she went ; and came back to her home
in one of these cities — I prefer not to locate it
too closely — with two bottles of medicine ; one was pink
and the other was greenish. One was to make the hair
grow on her beautiful head ; the other was to make the
flesh of her fair arms yet more peachy, and remove all
hirsute disfigurement.

Women are often careful. Some women are very
much more careful than some men. Carelessness is
not a sex-characteristic. I have seen men so thought-
less that they couldn't remember that socks should be
of one color, i.e., that no well-dressed man should wear
one green, one blue. No woman would do that.
Women rarely are careless about color. They usually
harmonize tints. But when a woman IS thoughtless
she can beat man all the way from sole to dandruff.
This friend of mine is so busy about being kind and
generous, as a rule, that she forgets details. So when
she got home and told about her visit to the beauty-
doctor and about what he said and didn't say, and had
produced the hair-medicine and the face and arm medi-
cine— the one warranted to make hair grow and the
other warranted to remove it, she had only an indis-
tinct memory of the purpose of each. She wasn't
quite sure whether the pink or the green produced long
and luxurious curly locks or removed them, or vice
versa.

Said I, "Wallace Maxfield used to make a hair
restorer and it was green. I wish you had some of
that, and if I had thought of it in time I could have
saved you a trip to the doctor ; for his was a wonderful

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 225

'invigiorator.' We used to treat it very carefully.
Wallace never handled it without gloves for fear of
beating out Esau. He got some on his finger-nails
once and the hair grew out all over them. If he had
cared, he could have grown hair enough on the end of
his thumb to have made it do duty as a shaving-brush.

"Mercy !" exclaimed the lady.

"Yes," continued I, "he got some by accident on the
doorknob of his old shop once — one of those white
china doorknobs, and he had to shave the doorknob
every day for a week until the effect of the stuff wore
off. That was greenish in color. Then he had a
detergent — I think it was pinkish. That worked just
as well the other way. He could wave a bottle of this
over a hair mattress, then : Excelsior ! there would not
be a hair in it. Customers used to bring old buffalo
coats in to be treated. He could drop about twenty
drops of this on a patchy old buffalo coat and take the
hair off of it smooth and clean where partially worn,
and then by applying the "invigorator" which was
greenish, the buffalo hair would grow within twenty
minutes, restoring it to its original beauty. Trouble
was the stuff was too powerful. I wish — "

"Then you think that probably the greenish is the
prescription for my head," said the lady. "Then that
settles it."

It did settle it, and so far as I can see, settled it all
right. The lady called at our house Sunday to see me
and ask somewhat excitedly if I saw any difference in
her appearance. I told her that she looked beautiful,
as usual, but that perhaps there was a bit of extra gloss
on her upper lip and was it swollen, and what was the
matter with the high lights on her nose, and did she
have a cold that made her eyes look a little swollen.
And what was —

"Apart from that I'm all right?" exclaimed she.
"Well, I want you to know that you told me all wrong.

226 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

I've been using hair medicine on my face and skin
remedy on my hair, and I'm so worried I don't know
what to do. The pink medicine is 'invigorator,' as you
call it, and the other is the opposite, and I expect from
all you have said to have whiskers on my face and a
nice, glossy, peachy skin on the top of my head, and
hair on my arms and a mustache, and I'll have to shave
and wear a wig and — oh, it's all your fault, boo, hoo!"

This is my situation and the state of mind in which
I find myself this Monday morning on returning to my
duties. The moral that I want to bring to you, dear
reader, is to beware of my failing, which is giving
advice, except for pay. More friendships have been
broken by advising persons unprof essionally on mooted
points, than any other way. If you make a charge it
is differsnt. You are then protected by the law of
caveat emptor. You know there was Cassandra.
Apollo loved her, but she threw him down. The god got
mad and he made Cassandra a confirmed advice-giver,
free, too, without charge, a she-prophet; with this
condition, nobody would ever follow her predictions.
She was always dead right. She knew, did Cassandra,
but nobody believed her. Most of us are unlike
Cassandra. And that's the danger. The New Year
is on! Let's all take a brace and only give advice as
a matter of business, at so much per diem or per advice,
office hours and all that.

As yet there is a chance for you to avoid danger and
perhaps for me to escape. The lady is not yet bald
nor does she bear any resemlblance to Charles E.
Hughes; but if she develops later and you follow my
fate and it compares with Cassandra, you will see why
things look gloomy to me.

ON "OLD PICTURES IN THE JUNK SHOP"

N A CERTAIN junk-store in Lewiston are two
pictures in mahogany frames of fifty years
ago; sturdy faces of a man and a woman,
looking out on the busy street. They are
photographs of a fine up-standing, prosperous
couple, some countryfolk of a generation
long since gone.

One cannot pass this shop without seeing these
pictures, thus disposed for sale among the other junk;
and thus seeing them one must feel a sense of sadness
at this desecration of some home that from the look of
these faces, must have been once prosperous and
happy.

What fate has sent the portraits of these people
into such a shop, to be put up for sale? Is it not
monstrous that relatives and friends did not consign
them at least to the happier fate of destruction?
There must have been some heir or residuary legatee
who had the power silently to lay away these venerable
faces and let them be forgot, if there be none, who
now would care to recall them. How short is human
lo-^^e ; how soon passes consideration even for the mem-
ories of the dead !

The other day we saw a string of gold beads in the
possession of a great granddaughter. She had small
regard for them and spoke slightingly of them. But I
could recall the picture of a fragile little grandmother,
sitting in a low chair by a window in a warm mid-sum-
mer afternoon. A huge willow tree brushed the little
window to the west and the low hum of bees was in a
hive just outside, among all the clover tops that the
world could seemingly ever grow. There was caraway
in the tall, straggling bushes, by the side of the willow-
trunk, and away and away over the hills and beyond
their purple rims, was the World, to me. The Gospel

228 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Banner, a stout Universalist weekly, lay in her lap and
her hands were folded. Around her neck was this
string of gold beads — ^^and never day or night was she
without them. They should have been buried with
her as she sat hands folded, all mysteries solved, at
Peace.

And so it is with the old pictures and the old photo-
graph albums that are found kicking around in the old
book-stores or piled away in attics. If they could
speak and the beating hearts once more be revived
and with them all the pleasure, love and hope that once
these photographs carried, we should hear stout
objection to the neglect to which they are now sub-
jected. These pictures that are found in the old junk
shop — it takes little to re-create the scene as the old
father and mother went happily away to the photogra-
pher's to have these pictures made, as a memorial to
loving children. It may have been the consummation
of some wedding anniversary; some tribute to the
hanging of the crane in the young manhood and
womanhood when all of the world lay before them and
all was bright with love and courage. It takes little,
as I say, to re-create the happy home ; the evening fire-
side ; the tender care of children ; the patient labor over
little frocks and baby-things ; the weary toil for better
conditions ; the sacrifices for schooling ; the passing out
into the world of the young ; the loneliness of age ; and
now this! Better oblivion than the disgrace of the
junk-shop.

I should hope that a law might be passed against
sale of the intimate mortuary things of men — intimate
pictures, the stones over the graves of the dead. It is
hard to contemplate what may happen to our own.
**What song the syrens sang or what name Achilles
assumed when he hid himself among the women," as
Sir Thomas Browne says, were easier to know than
what shall become of us as, looking our best, believing

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 229

that there are those that love us, we consign ourselves
to the photographer and send down thru the ages a
very capable looking simulacrum. We may be very
proud of it and hope for a tender consideration until
at least it shall have grown old-fashioned. But the
pictures that we frame in mahogany and hang on the
wall and consecrate to the household gods and expect
to be respected — what mercy is shown by those that
come after us, if in the hour, when the old home shall
be broken up and the roof -tree vanish and the soul go
out of the home, some kindly hand put not the torch to
the intimate things and lay our mahogany-framed
likeness on some funeral-pyre to send up in flames
what was once the spirit of the home. Dust and ashes !
Better than a junk-shop and a ten-cent sale!

ON "THE WOODS OF GOD"

T IS calling — I can hear it — all over the land
they are hearing it and, afar off where the
guns are roaring and the shells are boring
into the soil of France, they are hearing it —
the call of the woods of Maine.

I saw a letter the other day, from a boy
over there. Said he, "Dad, I am happy over here, doing
what I feel to be my duty, but, next to seeing you and
mother, is the desire that I feel to set out with you, in
the crisp, frosty morning of one of our late October
days for the good old trip to the woods. We'll have it
yet, in peace and plenty. And we'll never kill another
living thing — just the woods, the silent woods, the
woods of God."

Yes — it's calling ! Tugging at the heart-strings of
men, buried half underground in machine-rooms, press-
rooms, under the hatches of ships; in factories; in

230 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

counting rooms ; in shops ; in banks ; in schools ; out on
treeless plains. Only the other day I met a man, deep
down in the thunder of the roaring presses of a
Boston newspaper, head-pressman, never saw him
before; had not talked with him two minutes when,
finding that I came from Maine, he said: "I go every
spring to Kennebago to fish, every fall to the woods of
Maine to sit in the silence and see the big trees. I
work for that." And his eyes lighted and he was poet,
philosopher, dreamer all at once, as he is, by the way,
the star pressman of Boston.

What is it that calls? It is the lure of perfect
peace, unstained by man — that is what! When the
rifle rings and the deer falls and man advances on him,
with knife to flesh and blood to run — the heaven
becomes a little hell. But not for long! The trees
look down in silent contempt; the winds go over softly
sighing; the chickadee hops along with his old foolish
plaint; the blue jay chatters in the tall tops ; and under-
foot— are the silence, slow-gathering moss, deep decay,
death and birth, unto which man may come in rever-
ence and depart in peace. This is the lure for them
that truly love it, this is the call that never will cease
it3 reiteration.

The woods of God! Singularly, the most irrever-
ent feels that. I read the other day a story of three
men who traveled in mighty places where great trees
lifted their heads and great hills stood on end and deep
lakes bosomed themselves in mountain fastnesses.
One of them was an atheist. For him, there was no
God. Wherever he went, he explained everything by
science; scoffing at enthusiasms until his lowly guides
with nothing but time-worn faiths, were silent.
Finally they came to a place of surpassing beauty;
glory piled on glory; peaks in the blue; trees on the
peaks ; colors of jade and gold and all of the spectrum
— and they stood in silent awe, until the lowliest guide

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 231

of all broke the silence with a shout, "Mebbe, sir, there
ain't no God NOW; but by thunder there WAS once."

So you feel in the woods. It is a tryst with your
soul. It is a visit to the shrine of the Most High. It
is the solitude of the association with the Unseen.
It is a breath out of the dawn of the hereafter, whence
Cometh the healing. To sit on a mossy log amid the
gathering snow-flakes, miles from camp ; to wander in
the twilight over hard paths and see the rabbit run
and hear the partridge gathering her brood ; to see the
colors run in the undergrowth from pale pink to thin
mauve and bleak gray ; to hear the winds overhead ; to
feel the smart tug of the frosty night — to see at last
the lights of camp break thru the forests and be home
again! It is religion and everything else combined.

Weariness not often cometh to the flesh alone. It
is to the intellectual and the spiritual elements of a
man that it first comes. The "pep" is the first to go
and that is in the dynamo. In the woods of Maine are
all the balsams for the healing of the heart of man.
The chase, if you will, for impulse — the Woods, if you
seek the real thing for your regeneration. It is the
"pep" that first comes back to you. And when the big
woods go — what will men do? We know not. Better
than drugs are they. Those who determine destinies
of simple folk must not forget this. Sad the day when
Nations forget that "Back to Nature" is a primordial
command. Sad the day — if we do not provide for all
time, taverns in the forests for the rest of weary mind
and soul — great forest preserves, parks in primeval
state, by running waters in deep woods of God.

ON "MAINE IN AUTUMN"

HIS is the season when Maine stands on the
hill-tops looking out over the autumn world.
She has left the summer highway, the fields
waving in the sunshine, the brooks running
sweetly to the sea ; the sea, itself, she has left
gray and whitening in the winds — ^to stand
up here, like a woman in scarlet, waiting for the snow-
flakes to drive her in.

She is fair above all others, is Maine, in this Octo-
ber season. No other land compares with her. I have
seen Colorado in the Autumn, with the yellow aspens
in the mountain tops. Up crest and down they run,
ever the same ceaseless yellow of the buttercup. But
what is that by the side of the hills of Maine ? She is
like the woman of the Song of Solomon, "Thy lips are
like the thread of scarlet; honey and milk are under
thy tongue ; the smell of thy garments is like the smell
of Lebanon. Awake! O, North wind; come! thou
South." From hill to hill Maine flaunts her ribands.
From peak to peak, flames the curve of her lips. In
valley and on hillsides spread her garments, of all the
colors of the celestial dye-pots. And there she stands,
like the apocalypse of a sunset of the gods! What
pageantry ! what beauty, here in Maine !

Autumn! already the first storms of an approach-
ing winter have swept the land. The black willows
stand bare along the edges of the river. The last
summer guest is packing for home. The only sound
of the outside world is the dull throb of the sportsman's
gun in the distant thickets and the passing of the auto-
mobile, loaded with sportsmen bound for the deep
woods for the big game. The deer have left the fields
for the forests and are skirting the ridges where the
beech-trees stand, dun brown or deep yellow in the
amber light of the October sun. The trout have said

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 233

good-bye to the angler for another six months. The
bear is looking over the fields and standing perchance
on some lonely hill, feeling the tingle of the evening
approach, that suggests a snug hole in a winter's sleep.
The air is very still. The fine sound of crickets that
one hears in September has gone, and no longer the
late grasshopper rises in clouds under foot. Afar, thru
a red haze of maple-leaves you may see the smoke of
some distant towns, but what are towns by the side of
these hills, clothed in raiment ecstatic, radiant, flaming
as the fires of the northern lights where the Hyper-
borean gods are burning brush-fires till all the fire
departments of Heaven cannot stop them.

It is not for any writer of halting prose or for any
minor poet, to describe this glorious land of ours —
Maine — in October. It seems an anomaly, that when
poets seek simile, they go to Capri or Ischia or the Vale
of Chamouni, when they might come up here into the
vestibule of Heaven, and get the pictures for their
fancy. The maple-tree, standing red against the green
of the spruce, whose pyramidal tops rise as out of a
garden of poppies and roses and all other fervid color,
is of itself enough to bring one ten thousand miles to
see. The "clear bright scarlet leaves of the sumac
hang down like a soldier's sash," said Thoreau. I have,
myself, seen from the shores of Moosehead a line of ten
million, million colors stretching forty miles away.
And I saw it yet again, reflected in the mirrored surface
of the lake on Whose blue surface the clouds of the sky
floated! And back of this, piled up, Pelion on Ossa,
arose great mountains of the same color. And in the
mirror of the lake the mountains also were painted.
And my boat floated in color and climbed mountain
peaks of scarlet and sank into the bosom of flaming
gardens. And the colors steeped to my very soul !

We do not talk enough about this State. We do
not tell the truth about it. We are like men living

234 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

among acres of diamonds and not knowing that they
are beautiful, because they are so common. We say
as we look at those things that God has given us and us
alone, "There is nothing in Europe to equal that."
Foolish man; there is nothing anywhere except in
Heaven to begin to compare with Maine, in her autumn
radiance. And I am not so all-fired sure about there
being anything to equal it in Heaven.

ON "MAKING OUT YOUR INCOME TAX"

IGURE it as you please, no man can make out
an income tax, the first time, and have it
balance. I have made out mine, recently,
and know. And today I cannot tell whether
I owe the government $872.19 or the govern-
ment owes me $94. I am naturally inclined
to the latter opinion; but I can't tell until I get
acquainted with the meaning of fiduciary and amorti-
zation and can tell the difference between a tax-
covenant bond and a non-resident alien.

The point is right here in my income tax : did I con-
tribute under the vocational rehabilitization act (see
Sect. E) "to an amount not in excess of 15 per cent of
net income as computed without the benefit of this
paragraph, such contributions allowable as deductions
only if verified by the Commissioner with the approval
of the Secretary," or did I in the case of buildings
"allow for the amortization of the cost of such part of
the buildings as had been borne by the tax-payer."
It seems to me as tho I did, and then again when I wake
up, it seems as tho I did not.

I amble ^long in my study of my income tax and it
occurs to me that "in cases under paragraph four of
subdivision A and in case of any income from an estate

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 235

during the period of administration or settlement per-
mitted by subdivision (c) to be deducted from the net
income paid by fiduciary, the tax shall not be paid by
the fiduciary." If this be so, then it makes some dif-
ference.

I was working on my income tax yesterday all by
myself — with no expert assistance, because I desired
to find out how the matter struck a common, unedu-
cated mind. I figured persistently and by adding in
the amortizations and subtracting the fiduciaries, I
found that under section (g) Part IV, title "Payment
of Taxes," I owed the government $872,19. This was
more than I expected, because I never had $872.19 in
all my life at one time. The nearest I ever had was
$400, when I went on my wedding trip, and I had it all
in one-dollar bills, so as to impress my new wife with
a plethoric bank-roll. I may say in passing that her
dream has been shattered.

The perspiration gathered on my brow as I looked
at the $872.19 and I read, "In any suit or action
brought to enforce payment of taxes made due and
payable by virtue of the provisions of this section, the
finding of the commissioner, made as hereinunder pro-
vided, shall be for all purposes presumptive evidence
of the taxpayer's design, whether made after notice to
the taxpayer or not." Of course if the "finding" of
the Commissioner included the finding also of the
$872.19, it would be all right, but farther on, I notice
that if neither of us can find it, "all individuals, whether
acting as lessees, or mortgagors of property, fiduci-
aries, employers, with interest, annuities, amortiza-
tions, salaries, compensations, emoluments or other
gains (not including gain in flesh) who fail to pay,
shall be sent to jail for a year and punished by paying a
fine which floats before my dazed eyes so oddly that
sometimes it looks like $1,000 and sometimes as
$10,000.

236 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

It seemed wrong to me to be obliged to pay $872.19,
not ever having had so much and not being able to
borrow it, so that for a time it looked as tho I should
either have to give up writing these "Just Talks" after
March 10th, or else write them from jail — which would
be perhaps just as pleasant as writing them where I do
now. And then I noticed that "If a fiscal-year partner-
ship ends during a calendar year, the rates for the pre-
ceding calendar year shall apply to such part of the
fiscal year as the proportion which such fiscal year
with the said calendar year, bears to the full fiscal year,
and the rates for the said calendar year during the said
fiscal year shall apply to the remainder."

"If that is so," said I to myself, "it may perhaps
simplify it." Then I began over again and, using the
same figures exactly, and adding the fiscal to the
calendar and subtracting all the amortizations from
all the fiduciaries; adding in the non-resident aliens;
taking a due proportion of the remaining consolidated
invested capital and deducting the amount paid on one
per centum of the tax-covenant stocks paid at the
source, and not covered by sur-tax as provided in
Sect. (2) Table III, I found that the Government
owes me over $90. I am willing to add a couple of
fiduciaries and call it square.

We have lost two valuable employees already from
figuring income tax. One of them has moved to Porto
Rico where, according to Sec. 261, the Porto Rican
Legislature has the power to amend, alter or repeal
income tax laws. The other man was quietly working
when his head burst, with a loud report. He died from
an amortization, combined with an embolism and
untroubled by emoluments.

ON "WATCH YOUR STEP"

PART of these Talks must necessarily be
biographical, because I know more about
myself than I know about anyone else, in
spite of the fact that an anonymous corres-
pondent who signed herself "One of the
Brave," told me the other day that I was a
nanny-goat, or words to that effect, and that I ought
to go out and take a walk around myself and look
myself over, having evidently been pampered all my
life and never knowing what it was to work for a
living. Good gracious!

Well ! this one is about a time when I was not pam-
pered, so far as I can judge. I was eleven years old
and went barefoot summers and sported a set of
lingerie consisting of one pair of linen pants, somewhat
dome-shaped in the rear, and one cotton shirt. It is a
story of what happens to anyone who does not look
where he is stepping, and I will place my moral right
here. Watch your step! If you are an anonymous
hero, keep out of mischief. If you are a free-roamer,
keep out of trouble. If you are planning a serious
step, especially evil, watch out.

It was my intention to go gunning, on this bright
and beautiful summer day; but I was lacking two
things — a gun and ammunition. My uncle had both,
but was not inclined to be considerate. So I decided to
turn burglar. That was where I should have watched
my step. Fathers and mothers, read this to your
children and show them ME, about to take the first
step in evil. And be sure to follow me to the finish.

My uncle kept his ammunition on the top shelf in
the woodshed. As I was hardly tall enough to put a
bridle on a goat, he thought it was out of reach. But
it was not. Under the shelf was a barrel. I secured
the gun from my uncle's bedroom — false step No. 1.

238 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

It was loaded. Clutching it .tightly, as a boy will, I
climbed to the top of the barrel and reached up for the
ammunition. It was here that I made false step No.
2. The barrel top was one of those old-fashioned ones
made a trifle smaller than the barrel and held in place
on the top by a board nailed across and resting on the
chines. It upset; did a double turn, and I disappeared
in the barrel, gun and all.

Now, if you were taking a first step in crime, what
sort of a material would you prefer falling into ? Jam,
maybe! Mine was soft-soap; and I slid into that
barrel of soft soap, just as slick and just as far as any
boy ever slid into trouble in all this wide world. I
never fitted into anything else in all my life, so abso-
lutely tight and smooth as I did into that soap. It
came up past — long past, the dome of "them pants."
It came up past the tail of that cotton shirt. It came
up past my collar button and, thank the Lord, or I
would not be a nanny-goat today, it rested just at my
chin and I was not able to see over the top of the barrel.

And that was not all. I couldn't climb out. Ever
try to climb out of the affectionate embrace of a barrel
of soft-soap? Ever try to dig your toes into the side
of a barrel of soft-soap? You stand more chance of
b ing a member of the peace conference. I hollered.
Nobody heard me. My voice came back, slippery and
all over lather. I yelled half an hour, no response.

Then I took step No. 3. I resurrected the gun from
the depths of the soap and fired it straight at the
kitchen door. Grandfather and grandmother were
there! Oh yes! They were there! And a yard of
soap leaping thru the air and a fine assortment of bird-
shot went hurtling into the peace of that August after-
noon. I never knew just what happened. Grand-
father didn't, either. He says he saw it coming ! The
shot mercifully spared the old couple, but the soap!
Oh my! It gave grandpa a shave and a shampoo and

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 239

a hair-cut and a Saturday night bath and dyed his
whiskers. It drove grandma into a state of soft-soap
never before seen in the annals of that town. It killed
the canary bird and shook the fleas out of the dog. It
trimmed the cat's whiskers and gave her a facial
massage. It cleaned the house and changed all of the
furniture around. It almost lifted the mortgage.

But it saved my life and preserved me for posterity
and made me so clean that I have never taken a wrong
step since. So! Watch your step.

ON "LITTLE SHAVERS"

S I WAS going to work the other day I saw a
"little shaver" standing up against a hydrant,
waiting for a car to take him to school. I
can tell a "little shaver" when I see him. He
is always Somebody's little shaver, bearing
the marks of somebody's care in sending him
forth, somebody's kisses on his cheek ! somebody's pal-
pitating worry as he sets forth; somebody's waiting
until he returns.

This little shaver was dressed in a khaki overcoat
and a khaki billy-cock hat, set on the side of his head
with much art. Around his neck was hung a canvas
case, like those in which the doughboys carried their
gas masks "over there." He permitted me to look into
it. It held his books, his luncheon, his paper-pad.
This little shaver was about five years old, I should
reckon. He made my heart warm and my eyes rather
moist at the thought of other days and certain moth-
erly cares of my own. I asked him who "packed his
kit." He said, "My muvver."

Little shavers are what induce men and women to
struggle on seeking something that shall make life
worth living for little shavers, which will probably be

240 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

more "little shavers" for sacrificial tears and troubles,
and so on and on ; for the world is not coming to an end,
and men and women are to be happier as the ages come
and as Pentecost draws nigh. Women carry little
shavers under their hearts. Men carry them in their
joy and pride. And they send them out as the
"muvver" had sent this one out, to take their chances,
just as clean and well equipped as possible, and with
their sack and scrip all prepared.

The world also ought to be a sort of mother and
father to little shavers. They should not be trampled
on or hurt. The strong who have authority would do
well to take a look at little boys and little girls going
to and fro, some to school, some carrying dad's dinner-
pail, some playing about the street, and remember that
they are wards of society, of laws, of public service, of
equities in public domain, of human right, of educa-
tional advantages, of protection from public evil. In
every legislative-hall should be a picture of childhood
in some form. Every year there should be a general
accounting by State and Nation as to what is being
done for childhood. Trite enough is the saying : "They
are the men and women of tomorrow;" but truth is
often trite and the "ten commandments do not budge"
no matter how often assailed, nor do they become stale,
how often repeated.

We would all like to be "little shavers" all over
again, would we not, just to tell other little shavers,
out of our now broadened experience with life, what
love their parents truly bear them; what toil they
necessitate; what sacrifices they imply; what anguish
they occasion ; what worry they bring. We would like
to tell all boys and girls the duty they owe to mothers ;
how careful they should be of them, how tenderly they
should regard them.

Little shavers ! How stolidly they go about, taking
all as a matter of course ! Giving little save now and

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 241

then, when by climbing sleepily into mother's or
father's arms they pillow weary heads on happy hearts.
The infinitude of parental love ! What means it, if
it does not signify the infinitude of the Greater Love
that a Universal Father bears toward all us "little
shavers" here below, careless, indifferent, thoughtless,
but destined to come home some night from the long,
long school, find the light streaming from the doorway
of the House and content to pillow a weary head on a
bosom of infinite love ! If not this, then what does it
all' mean? What availeth it if love here passes with
little shavers!

ON "KILLING THE PIG"

FTER a period of more or less familiar
acquaintance with a family pig, the boys in
our neighborhood came to feel affectionately
disposed toward him. We used to wander
instinctively toward the pig-pen in moments
of abstraction, to nurse griefs and wait for
the tingle of the hickory in dad's hands to evaporate.
There was fitness in weeping into a pig-pen. There
was sociability in the pig's sympathetic grunts of wel-
come. When all else was against us, it did seem as
though the pig loved us. At least he never found any
fault with us — which was more than we could say of
anyone else about the premises.

So, when it came pig-killing season, every boy had
a duty to attend the obsequies far and near. At school
the commonest question was, "When's your pig goin'
to be killed?" We kept a list of pig-killings and waited
them as a mournful, yet eager, festival. Many a tedious
mile have I walked over roads in the country with
other boys, on the way to pig-killings. Yet I recall

242 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

having seen the overt act but once, and then the bloody-
jowls and the piercing screams of the dying porker
convinced me that once was enough. It must have
been the ceremonial, rather than the ceremony, that
attracted us. I have had the same impressions later
in certain performances of Oliver Twist, where Bill
Sykes massacres Nancy. One look satisfied me.
After that, I preferred to close my eyes and consider
the thing done, in spite of me.

Of course, every boy whose own pig was being
killed, held for the time being autocratic relations to
the rest of the community of boys. He was host
ex pigofficio. He was President of the Boy-Snouts.
He took us around previous to the obsequies, provided
we arrived in season. He introduced us to the soon-to-
be-lamented. He called the pig by name and we all
looked in silence into the unsuspecting, if somewhat
narrow and contracted, eyes of the pig. We had
thoughts — at any rate I know I had 'em — on the pass-
ing of the finite into pork. We gave him a last fare-
well scratching with the handy hoe. Then the host
took us around and showed us the shears on which the
dead was to be elevated ; the boiling vat into which he
was to be plunged for purposes of tonsorialism. He
promised certain recondite portions of the pig's
anatomy to different boys — all except the bladder.

The arrival of the butcher ; the bustling about many
things; the goings and comings of men and women;
the steaming of the great kettles ; the final approach of
the butcher to the pen; the invariable sudden fear of
the animal ; the occasional chase around the yard with
a fat butcher hanging to a pig's tail — all these are
firmly fixed in memory. Enough! The squeals still
ring in memory. Alas for the order of the universe
that says that beasts shall die for the food of a folk !
We gathered about the reeking carcass where it lay and
often wept a tear. "Poor old Buster," said the boy, "I
won't ever bring you any more dinner."

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 243

But tears pass. The proper manicuring of a pig is
something that had a peculiar fascination for the old-
fashioned boy. I suppose that the modern boy would
find nothing interesting in it. He cares for nothing
that he can get for nothing. His ideas are fixed on a
chummy-roadster and the moving-picture. The simple
bucolic divertisements of lang syne are old stuff. He
wouldn't even be interested in an old-fashioned soap-
making or a corn-husking. He would not swap his
jack-knife for a pig's bladder. But with most old-
fashioned boys a dried and properly cured pig's bladder
was something for which a boy would barter his hope
of immortality, and not to blame — the hope of immor-
tality being a matter of future consideration. Most
old-fashioned boys have blown themselves red in the
face over the pipe-stem of a pig's bladder, and when
the job was done have enjoyed nothing else so much as
the chance to step up behind another boy and give him
a resounding welt with it behind the ear.

These are things that it is well to recur to now and
then, as indicative of the simpler joys of boyhood, in
the days of simpler life. We are all boys to more and
more extent. Life in genejral has 'become lequally
complex. Men and women are no longer satisfied with
neighborhood matters. But the question intrudes, are
they any happier now than then? Is life sweeter and
better, with all of the luxury of the present, than in the
simple day when it was no trouble "to keep up with
Lizzie," and when, if you had a pig to kill and a Holy
Bible on the center table and a barrel of soft-soap, you
were the people?"

ON "THE PUSSY-WILLOW"

AYBE you have already seen children coming
along the streets that lead homeward from
the outlying brooks and ponds these March
days, with arms fuU of pussy-willows, and
you have felt suddenly tender again toward
life and considerate of how steadily the calm
world of Nature pursues her way, unvexed by all
of the ant-like skurrying to and fro, of man and
nations of men. Out of the past rise memories of
yourself as a child searching for the first signs of
the little furry catkins and eagerly bringing them
home, to tempt again the old-time miracle of faith;
that if put where it was exactly warm enough — in
the cuddly toe of a little shoe by the warm fireside —
out of the night and all its wonders, might emerge,
by way of the immaculate conception of the pussy-
willow, a dear little roly-.poly kitten, with very bright
eyes and a spiky little tail firmly standing erect,
waiting there or else rolling over (kitten, tail, and all)
before the fire when you arose in the morning. Disap-
pointment never raised a doubt. There was ever a
reason and ever a failure.

So we see, each recurring spring, the coming of
the children, bearing the pussy-willow as a rite and
religion of childhood, of the spirit of resurrection, in
the very heart of the world. And the pussy-willow
has a perfect right, of its own dear little self, to have
a place of distinction in the episode. For it is first
on the spot; first of all vegetation to feel the kiss of
the lovely Sprite that tiptoes first to the brookside and
along the oozy borders of the ponds. Here, screened
from March gales and winter snows, in response to the
touch of spring, the pussy-willow puts off her brown
winter coat and begins to glisten in the furry little

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 245

dress that is so soft, warm and beautiful. And it is
odd that where Spring first finds her way out, there
she also departs, for, along the borders of the pond,
the last glimpse of vegetation endures in autumn, as
it shows first in the spring.

Another thing that may interest us all about our
little friend the pussy-willow, is that childhood, every-
where the world-over, has the same love for it. There
is not a place in the world where the willow does not
grow in some form. It is along the equator, in the
far-off polar regions as far as any vegetation what-
ever endures of the tree-type, and with many uses,
from material weaving baskets and reeds, to making
charcoal and bririging great returns to some people
who have raised the willow commercially. In olden
days, it was used instead of the palm in the church
festivals and appropriatdy as a symbol of the resur-
rection, for it has strange powers latent within it.
You can hardly kill a willow twig. Put it away and
allow it nearly to dry and desiccate and yet put it into
the earth and give it moisture, and from the bare
twig will set out roots and buds and it will struggle
into fresh green again in the bravest and most reso-
lute way. It has a singular reserve in leaf-buds. It
keeps many of them against day of need. If fire
sweeps in willow, or it becomes parched by drought
and seemingly dies, the first touch of moisture will
start out the reserve buds and again it is on its way
as tho nothing had happened. You have seen the
willow-tree cut off at its base and left in a condition
that would discourage the ordinary tree; and yet,
in a year or two, there it is again, all foliage, spring-
ing from the slender withes about the trunk.

After the children have brought in the pussy-
willow and the miracle of spring is on its way, the
catkins become either silver or yellow. You find them
swollen and fat. The golden ones are loaded with the

246 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

stamens; the silver with the pistils. And soon the
bees are busy; flying from the silver to the gold, fer-
tilizing them with the pollen on their feet, while they
get the first honey of the new year. And then, by
and by, much later in the year, the willows are again
shining in the golden light with long, waving burdens
of the seeds that float away on land rivers and are
so prolific that by nature's scheme if one in a bil-
lion lodges happily and grows, the balance of nature
is preserved, so far as the pussy-willow tree is
concerned.

So — here it is again, the new March-time in the
arms of childhood, coming down the street, the pussy-
willow ! Wonder what is within the furry coat ! What
mystery of life; what casket of the Lord God's own
placing! "Who knoweth the balancings of the clouds
and how thy garments are warm when He quieteth
the earth by the south wind? Hath the rain a father
and who hath begotten the drops of dew?" How little
we know — less even than Job! Little children know
more than we — for they at least see miracles in the
pussy-willow — while we often pass even the little chil-
dren by and see no miracles, only Things.

ON "THE TITLE AND THE FAMILY"

OMEHOW, I always supposed that if I had
been born a prince I would wear a feather in
my cap and go around on a pony and never
be called by any other name than my title.
It never occurred to me that I should
be concerned with having a father or a
mother — mere appendages of childhood, useful chiefly
at bed-time and in the dark watches of the night

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 247

when dream-horrors come and we cry out for
help, feeling sure of the tender watchfulness of
motherhood.

I used to read Fairy stories a good deal and my
notion of a palace was perhaps distorted. There was
little else for a prince to do than be waited upon. He
clapped his hands and servants appeared. Of course
a Prince never had to go to school. There were no
permutations or combinations and the doctrine of
chances never was to enter the case at all. Algebra
was for studious boys, not for princes, and as for
finding the perimeter of a duodecagon — the idea! I
would not bother even to learn to spell — ^and as a mat-
ter of fact, the old-fashioned princes and princesses
did not bother to spell ; not even to read printing.

The foregoing idea of royal households is possibly
not unique with me. I find some of my neighbors
have a rather hazy notion of a royal menage. Some
of them seem to feel that a prince approaches his
father, the King, on bended knee; salutes him lowly
and says "Your Majesty," and never "dad." I have
often wondered myself, and perhaps you have won-
dered, if queens ever kiss their children; ever wipe
their noses ; ever take off their bibs ; ever spank them ;
ever call them by baby-names. Is love left out of
royalty? Are domesticity and diet unknown in the
palaces? Do princes call each other "Bill" or "Ed,"
or "Harry" or "Jim?" Do little princes have old
Grannies, tender and dear old Grannies, to whom they
can go in grief and who will give them two lumps
of sugar in their tea (as Harry Lauder says his old
Grannie did, when he went to visit her as a boy and
for which he loves all old Grannies the world over,
today) and do they have Grandpops also?

I want you to know that I am not writing this as
an advocate of royalty. None of the crowned heads
are paying me any money for doing this piece of

248 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

writing. I am just maundering along wondering
about things in my own way. I am rather inclined
to say that royalty does not interest me at all ; human-
ity is what interests me — the simple fact that all
human beings, rich and poor, plutocra,t, king, bourgeois,
commoner, aristocrat, proletariat, are on the dead
level when it comes to love of the helpless little mite
that lies blue-veined within its mother's arms. We
are all fathers, mothers, children, uncles, aunts,
daddies, grand-daddies and grannies.

The other day Congressman White of Lewiston,
who says he reads this column religiously, for purpose
of the humanities herein said to be contained, sent
me a copy of the London Times that had escaped my
notice — for I do read the Times. It contained an
account of the death of Prince John, youngest son of
George and Victoria Mary. He had been a poor little
invalid all of his life and human love plainly was
showered upon him by all around him. He never
was seen in public ; for he had a disease which is called
epilepsy and he might be seized anywhere. He was
about fourteen years old when he died in his sleep.
He was buried in a coffin made from an oak-tree grown
at Sandringham, where he died Jan. 24, 1919.

At the funeral, which was private, there were
flowers from the family only and from the people of
the household. The flowers from the parents bore a
card which read, "For our darling Johnnie, from his
sorrowing parents." The child's grandmother, who is
Queen Alexandra, wife of the late King Edward VH.,
placed upon the simple little coffin a cross of lilies
and orchids with this inscription: "In remembrance
of my darling little Johnnie, Grannie's precious grand-
s^n, whose memory will never fade. May he rest in
peace forever with the Lord, tho we miss him
sorely here, on earth. From his poor old Grannie,
Alexandra." The little lad's sister and brother sent

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 249

a wreath with this inscription on the card: "For
darling Johnnie, from his sister and brothers, David,
Bertie, Harry, George and Mary."

There you are — not a prince in it! Not a King
or a Queen! Nothing but that older title, dear thru
all time, born "at life's drifted font," sacred in all of
the estimates of life, death, and resurrection; secure
in eternal edict of Love and its Laws — "Father";
"Mother"; "Sister"; "Brother"; "Grannie." By com-
parison, how small all others seem! By comparison,
how mighty is Love !

ON "CONFESSIONS OF A SMOKER"

FIRMLY believe that the man who smokes
deserves to be punished for it. Many of
them agree with me and are willing to abide
by the issue. Most of them have been pun-
ished some. The very learning to smoke
carries its qualms. I remember that when
I set out to accomplish the education in tobacco, I was
out in a sail-boat on a glassy, long-rolling sea, con-
nected to the business end of a black manila cheroot.
Roll on, thou dark blue ocean, roll — ^with accent on the
"dark blue." And yet, dear reader, may I confess,
I still have the awful habit of smoking, which I con-
sider the most pernicious and which I advise all others
to avoid. Why I did not lose the habit at that time
and place, I never could understand — I lost so much.

A correspondent writes me this week that the man
who smokes should by all of the biblical interpretations
of punishment be landed in hell. I agree with him. I
cannot fancy people smoking — or wanting to smoke —
in heaven. But that is not so much a question with

250 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

me (for if a man had the desire to smoke in heaven,
and as he has won the right to happiness, there would
be smoking-rooms somewhere), as is the belief that
a person here should try to please others and if those
who do not smoke, feel about it as they say, why ! we
should try to oblige them, same as we do people
playing golf. It makes me mad to see people wearing
out their lives and strength, playing golf when they
might be sawing wood. I don't do it — why should
others? It annoys me. They put their clubs on my
toes in the trolley cars. They go about with a superior
look on their faces. Must I submit tamely? Never!
I want golf playing abolished by law!

It has been decided also that the lowest sin of all
smoking is the cigarette. I smoke cigarettes! I quit
smoking cigars, for my health. It was being under-
mined by cigars. The pipe is also a rudimentary sin.
I selected the cigarette as the least harmful — the
tapering off to the final release from the dread bond-
age. I am still convinced that it is all that I hoped it
to be; and yet I find that I am in bad company. I
am gradually conquering it by getting onto simpler
brands. I began with the twenty cent kind and am
now down to the eight cent brand and hope by degrees
to get down to the five cent; the three cent; the two
cent, and thus taper off to nothing. I hope that a law
may intervene to make cigarettes either cheaper or
dearer — it does not matter much which.

I am warning boys against the first cigarette. It
is sure to make you trouble. There is something so
seductive and seditious about it that it cannot be
expressed in words. One cigarette will lead to another
and then to another, and by and by, some night you
will grow up (unless you die) and will go staggering
home to your wife, mother and children, full of Camels,
Meccas, Fatimas and Pall Malls, blear-eyed, incoherent,
the mere semblance of a human being, a shame to your
household and especially to your little children.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 251

This is no fancy picture. There is no more horrible
fate than the man so lowly inclined. And it may all
be stopped by omitting the first cigarette — all so easy.
Think of the time and money you will save by going
without. Think of the bondage of the smoker! He
is tied for life to a box of matches and a cigarette, a
pipe or a cigar. Men have wasted more time scratch-
ing matches this very day, than would build a mer-
chant vessel. Every day, men and women — for women
also are smoking — put more time into smoking than
would raise a million bushels of wheat. The figures
are not mine !

Charles Lamb wrote the most pathetic tale of his
bondage to the pipe. He was a melancholy man,
who smoked incessantly. I do not. I smoke only now
and then — mostly now. Lamb had the good habit of
feeling his sin. He was a philosopher on the subject.
I am only a warrior. I am "agin" it in theory and for
it in personal practice. I do not like to have others
smoke and not myself smoke. And yet I would like to
see the day come when nobody smoked, for then I am
sure I would not care to do it alone.

You may say that this is a lamentable confession.
I admit it. All writers come to the confessional
now and then. I assume that you, dear reader, will be
willing to come across with confessions equally per-
sonal as to your pet sins. I am willing, nay eager, to
be punished! Are you? I ask no leniency. I confess
and abjure and yet smoke on. I am punished daily. I
am punished nightly. I am punished in futurity. I
am of the vast army — going to quit. I am waiting,
waiting for sentence, of the high Court! And yet I
do feel that when the Law of the Statutes or the Law
of Habit or the Law of Righteousness does intervene
between the smoker and his sins, between the pensive
smoke wreath that makes his dreams all come true and
the cold realization of a smokeless after-supper time

252 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

with no book and pipe, no cigarette and typewriter
between him and the cold outer world, some compensa-
tion ought to be made him. He should have an extra
halo on his brow; or a purple stripe on his harp, or a
victory-badge on his little cloud-aeroplane to show
"over there" that he was a hero over here.

ON "THE UNIT OF SERVICE'

E HAVE all lately been besought to do some-
thing for the city of Auburn by way of
standing for organization and service to the
city thru such organization.

I wonder if all of us give sufficient consid-
eration to the matter of "units" of service.
We agree that service is the thing. This war has
enforced it as it never was enforced before. A Rock-
land, Maine, pastor, who has been in the trenches,
has found that the secret of bravery is in "merely
serving." It seems to occupy the mind and uplift the
soul. One is never afraid, while doing things for
others. If serving others is the thing greatly to be
desired, then it seems to be essential that we start
something — as the saying is — start it now and start it
at home. It is elementally a duty. He who fails in
it may properly be called a slacker. It is a duty to
turn the hand to the plow in the furrow in our own
field; not be forever looking abroad for other fields
that we fancy to be fairer and to need it more.

You and I have seen men and women who were
always wanting to do the big thing. They went roam-
ing abroad, , evangelizing the new world while their
own families went without decent food, decent atten-
tion, decent clothing and got along with no house-
keeping whatsoever. In olden days, they sewed for

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 253

the heathen rather than patched the pants of the
boys at home. There are some of these people now.
They want to go over and win the war. It is very com-
mendable— ^but they would probably be in the way.
Far better to stay at home, sacrifice and give, and all
the while try to make the home unit better and better.
After the war, America is to be saved or lost by the
condition of her cities and towns. If municipal and
town government is a^ failure, then woe unto the
state and nation !

Hence — the proper unit of service to the state is
never to be overlooked. It begins with yourself. You
are a unit and you must begin by consecrating a por-
tion of yourself, at least, to the service of your imme-
diate neighbors. Your original duty is to be clean and
decent yourself. Then you must protect and educate
and upbuild your children into manhood and woman-
hood in the true sense. Service to neighbors is the
starting-point outside the home. After that you
s^rve the ward. Then you serve the town or city.
Get the idea? If your town is clean and good and
honest and loyal and devoted to the cause of the Folks
by a concentration of such units as yourself, and if
there be other towns made up of units like you, then
the state becomes honest, loyal, clean and purely
democratic.

So I say it is impossible for any regeneration of
statehood to come, unless it begins with the home-unit.
Y'ou can't rebuild a people from the state down. It
must come from the people up. We do not live in all
Maine. We live on a certain street, in a certain neigh-
boi^hood, in a certain town, in a certain state, in a
certain Nation. If you and Tom and Dick and Harry
aU agree to be helpful, generous, altruistic citizens
and to make Auburn a wonder-city in respect to beauty
and decency and livableness — Auburn will be helped
and then the state and Nation, as well. It is SERVICE.

254 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

It is a BIG work. It is a work every man-Jack can do
and do well. It is a recipe for happiness. It is a cure
for the Grouch. It is a road to sobriety and clean-
liness. You talk about your duty to the War. Go
to it. Cuss the Kaiser and buy a Liberty bond. Do
everything you can — ^but do not forget that you live
in Auburn, Maine; that the war will end; that you
will be strengthening the arm of the Nation by every
ounce you add to the power for good of your own
community.

YOU are the only one that can do it. "Son !" said
a father to his small boy, "what are you scratching
your head so much for?" "Pa," said the boy, "it is
because I am the only one that knows it's itching."
That is the situation. We, in Auburn, know what is
the matter with Auburn. We alone know. It is up to
us — all of us, to make the town better and better. This
is service, to state, nation, and the new democracy.

ON "DOWN AND NOT OUT'

VER lie flat on your back and think it over!

It is good for you, whether you lie under

your automobile or out on a grassy hill-top

under the skies.
It gets the blood out of your head; it

distributes the lymph more evenly; it gives
you enlarged vision; it takes the conceit out of you,
especially if it be under the automobile, referred to.
And if something or someone happens to put you flat
on your back — oh! the good it does you! It teaches
you what your weaknesses are; develops just where
the crick in your anatomy is located; teaches you to
be humble. And you jump up ready to make a new
start and a better one than ever before.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 255

Down! But not out! That's the position I am
talking about. You have been going along pretty well
upright on your feet. Something floors you. Pride
goeth down with you, as saith the Scripture. You
are flat on your back and taking the count. In that
brief time you have leisure, untold, for thinking over
when, how and where you received the punch that put
you to the mat. You can, recumbently, size up the
individual whose feet you perceive to be finally on
a level with his head. What a chance to look the thing
that floored you fair in the face. If it be extravagance,
you see its foolish features. If it be dissipation, you
feel its hot breath, disgustingly. If it be lust, you
hear its ribald laughter. If it be negligence, you see
its slothful habit. If it be sin, you turn away from
its loathsome face. Never before did you see just
what you were fighting. Now, at last, you see it as
it really is. Help me up! Give me a hand. I know
the chap that gave me the punch. He is weaker than
I am. I know, now, where to strike him and strike
to win. I'm none the worse for having been flat on
my back, but rather, am I better — having been far
from perfect, hitherto.

And another thing as you lie flat on your back,
looking up, you may see thru the azure into skies be-
yond the blue. Doubtful if you ever looked at the
sky much, anyway, when you were pursuing the pleas-
ures of the cabaret — and elsewhere. Did you know
the sky is very peaceful and very large and very old
and very likely to outlast you and your fancies? Did
you know that it hath many stars at night that seem
to indicate that there are infinite fires beyond the
Pleiades and infinite heavens in the space of worlds?
Did you know that God gave it the color of the eyes
of an innocent baby — ^blue, yea, very blue, as tho filled
with celestial light. And by day what beats upon your
face? What but sunshine, and what is better than

256 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

that? Perhaps you may see far enough into the sky
to catch some glimpse of a certain power in the
heavens, not made of man but eternal — up there.
Perhaps it will give you a lift.

So! Get up! Go to it. You are not licked. Fact
is you are a lot stronger than before you went to
earth. Nobody can whip you, except yourself. The
world is full of folks who would help you, if you
needed it, but you don't. If you were any man before
you went down, you are a better man now. Here is
your motto: "Look up, not down; look forward, not
back; lend a hand." When you are standing up again
with the dawn of the new day in your face, pass
on the word.

And perhaps, in the newer life you will like to go
out on the hills and lie flat on your back just for fun,
and for the sake of the analogies. You will see a lot —
birds in the tree, clouds in the skies, sun in the
heavens, hope in the future. And all you will ask for
is someone to brush off your back with the promise to
your soul that henceforth it shall ever be kept clean.

ON "THE ETERNAL SEARCH"

AFCADIO HEARN tells us that in the house of
any old Japanese family, the guest is likely
to be shown some of the heirlooms. "A
pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before
you. Opening it, you will see only a beau-
tiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord
decked with tiny tassels. You open the bag and see
within it another bag of a different quality of silk,
but very fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which con-
tains a fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains
a sixth, which contains a seventh, which contains the

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 257

strongest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever
beheld. Yet it is not only curious but also precious;
it may be more than a thousand years old."

Historical, natural science and the study of life in its
ultimate forces have to do with similar unwrapping.
One removes one wrapper and then another. We try to
count the threads, we try to analyze the envelopes;
we try to find the secret that they contain. And when
we do find it, we ask science what it is. She can only
say, "I do not know." It is so old, so wonderful, that
science can give no name to it.

This is a very good illustration of the hopelessness
of human effort to understand (Jod. The most learned
theses end at something which man cannot name. He
makes a big show of removing the envelopes; he
displays his treasure. He cannot give you any
further light.

So, one may be pardoned for getting weary of
human effort to solve life all at once, by writing a
book about it. There is a story of a man who died
and came back to earth. He had spent his life on a
monumental work, intended to explain the mystery
of this world and the next. He was permitted to
wander thru all of the libraries where he expected to
find his book. The only work of his that he found
in any library was a little, thin volume of casual
essays on his own personal experience. His solution
had passed into oblivion ; his experience still lived.

Perhaps the solution of life and its problems, its
source and its destiny, may lie in the collection of scat-
tered experiences, as the final pattern of the rug is
in the collected threads. Science cannot answer a
single question of elemental sort. It deals in processes
but not in the "why" of one of them. It unfolds the
element but cannot name it. It is lost in wonder in
two worlds — the great spaces and the small. It makes
a great parade of knowledge, but while it knows that

258 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the compass points north and that the seed germinates
in ground — it has no name for the force that thus
compels them.

Everything that you study, therefore, tends to
make you more firmly a believer in something you
cannot name. "There are two books whence I collect
my divinity," wrote Sir Thomas Browne, hundreds and
hundreds of years ago, in that most wonderful of
books "Religio Medici." "Besides that one written
of God, there is another of his servant Nature, that
universal and public manuscript that lies expanded
before the eyes of all. Those who never saw Him in
the one have discovered Him in the other." And
Bacon said : "This I dare affirm in knowledge of Nature,
that a little natural philosophy and the first entrance
into it doth dispose a man to atheism, but, on the
other side, much natural philosophy and wading deep
into it, will bring about men's minds to religion."

Thus, will you please bear with me for sermonizing
in this day when religion of some kind is so sorely
needed. Will you bear in mind that you may
go as far as you like and, ever and ever farther on in
the little box of your life, are things that contain
things. And that when you go as far as you can —
there is at last something you cannot name. Is it the
eternal? Is it the everlasting. Almighty God? Men
of science, thru all ages, have sought to discover him.
It is the quest of all study. And is it not true, after
all, that the Kingdom of God cometh not by observa-
tion— but rather by faith and at the mother's knee?

ON "GENTLENESS AS A PRACTICE"

UR OLD friend, Marcus Aurelius, says: "Con-
sider that gentleness is invincible, provided
it is of the right stamp, without anything of
hypocrisy or malice. This is the way to dis-
arm the most insolent, if you continue kind
and unmoved under ill-usage; if you strike

in with the right opportunity for advice; if, when he
is trying to do you an ill turn, you endeavor to recover
his understanding and retrieve his temper by such
language as this, *I shall not be injured, you are only
injuring yourself.' Show him that bees never sting
their oAvn kind."

I can hear you say that this does not apply to war-
times. And that is true! Moralities are swept away
in times of war and that is one of the worst things
about war. What ethical ruin it entails ! What dam-
age it may do to forgiving natures ; what loss of moral
susceptibilities; what devastation of gentleness!

But, normally, this is good teaching and it is inter-
esting to note what the pagan philosopher was
thinking, only a few years after the Nazarene had
finished teaching that nobler doctrine of brotherly love,
gentleness, and altruism that are at the foundation of
the moral as well as the spiritual code of Christianity.
It seems as tho something of the spirit that emanated
from the martyrs that Marcus Aurelius himself helped
to make by his persecution of Christians, had gone
from the prison to the palace. But Marcus Aurelius
persecuted Christians, chiefly because of jwlitics and
because some of the Christians, after Christ had gone
on Home and they had lost His example, were very
noisy and obstreperous persons and really encouraged
persecution. Surely, they did not cultivate gentle-
ness— all of them.

There is no passage in all scripture that has been
more misinterpreted than that suggestive of turning

260 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

the other cheek. Sects have been formed on this pas-
sage of scripture. They have usually demonstrated
one thing. It is this : You cannot reason with insane
people. Hang to your ethics as long as possible. Act
mildly to the limit. Be gentle to the sane. Be kind to
the insane. Summon all of your arguments, but when
the tiger flies at your throat, either fight or run. And
if he is a man-eating tiger, your duty as an exemplar of
gentleness, is to fight. For tigers and Germans need
to be restrained. Your first duty in gentleness is to
the unprotected — to society in general.

But there are lots of people who seem to think
that when they are required to admonish, to advise or
to differ with others, they must bellow all over the
premises. They seem to think that they must bluster,
swear, assume authority and announce "I am the
boss." Nothing doing! No need whatever. The
English officer often goes into battle with a light walk-
ing stick in his hand. He does not need anything more
for his "authority." So, too, you need not splutter and
growl and spit like a bob-cat whenever you approach a
neiglibor or an employee or an under-clerk in your
department, with a reproval. The duty is not merely
passive, therefore, as far as the philosophy of Marcus
Aurelius is concerned. You are not merely to be gentle
in reply to ungentleness, but also you should not start
things in the first place. Keep your ethical shirt on.
Keep the caloric from under your collar. Don't be a
Hun ; be a Honey.

Yes! The old Pagan was right. Remember how
unconcernedly Socrates wore his old sheepskin when
his scolding wife, Xanthippe, stole his only coat and
ran out of the house with it. Xanthippe did it to see
Socrates get mad. Socrates declined to be angry.
Xanthippe never tried it again. The soft answer does
indeed turn away wrath. Try it. And not only try

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 261

that but also try to (be no partner in wrath. Let God
alone indulge in Wrath — ^against them that wilfully do
wrong in His sig<ht. Your part is to keep out of it,
altogether.

ON "SOME STOIC PHILOSOPHY"

ECKON the days in which you have not been
angry. I used to be angry every day; now
every other day ; then every third and fourth
day ; and if you miss it so long as thirty days,
offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to God.

Epictetus wrote this, first, 1860 years

ago. He was a Stoic slave to a Roman tyrant. He
probably knew a thousand times more than his mas-
ter and probably kept his temper better.

If you need advice on general rules of conduct,
there is no better than this. The man who becomes
angry makes a mistake. He gives away, immediately,
all the advantages he originally possessed. Suppose
him to have been a man of good judgment in business.
If he gets angry, he loses his business judgment. He
no longer sees things clearly. His brain is stirred ; his
blood is racing; his mind is confused; he makes mis-
takes. Suppose him to have been a kindly man. If he
i3 angry, he is apt to be unkind, nay, even brutal.
Suppose him to have been a just man. He loses his
sense of justice. Suppose him to have been a careful
man. He loses his sense of care and exposes himself
to dangers unwittingly. In short, the angry man is
partially insane and the man who is not angry can
always get the better of him, on equal terms, because
he has about himself a degree of judgment and pru-
dence and so-called "wits" that give him a great
advantage.

262 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

Here is an example. In prize-fighting, it is the
effort of the one fighter to get the other angry. When
he can do this so that the angry man actually "sees
red," so to speak, then he has a distinct advantage
over his unbalanced adversary. The wily fighter
refuses to accept the bait. So, too, should you in
business or in daily life. Every time you get angry,
you average to make a fool of yourself ; your associates
comment upon it; you are set down as a distinct
failure in that respect. It is commented upon as a
weakness. "Too bad," says the layman of the other-
wise good lawyer, "he would be fine counsel in court
if he didn't lose his temper." Joseph H. Choate won
many cases against one of the greatest attorneys in
the United States by playing with the man's temper.
Mr. Choate was always affable. Nobody could get
him angry. Mr. Choate could simulate anger; never
indulging in it. If I were a lawyer, I would study
Epictetus. Being a newspaper man, I don't have to.
We are public servants and not permitted to get angry.

Once a young couple were married. I was there
and saw it. After the knot was tied and they came
before the bride's father, a man of wisdom and
equanimity, he gave them this advise: —

"I cannot hope, my daughter, that you will go
thru your married life without ever getting angry at
your husband. I cannot hope, my son, that you will
go thru life without ever getting angry at my
daughter. But for the love of home and happi-
ness, never — never — never — ^both get mad at the
same time."

This is scientific. Two mad men leave no wise
counsel on the premises. A mad man and a mad
woman are without restraint. So in this household,
of which I speak, it has been the rule that when one
gets angry the other keeps cool and goes to laughing.
It's a good thing for young couples to remember. By
and by, it leads to the philosophy of Epictetus.

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 263

So, I say that it is money in your pocket not to
get mad. More men have been ruined by law suits
engendered by anger, than in any other one way.
When you get mad you give away your trenches, your
ammunition, your reserves and your leadership. The
enemy then gets you.

ON "GOOD MAJORS AND BAD"

EOPLE whom office has never compelled to
assume authority over others have missed
a valuable lesson in social sympathy. To
have been a "Major" or a "Colonel" in war
is either to make a man or to mar him.
Authority goes either to the head or to the
heart. Sometimes it makes a whistle out of a pig's
tail and sometimes it makes a pig's tail out of a
whistle. Some of the greatest men in the land got
their training as officers in the Civil War, and some
of the failures of life were developed in the same way.
One day after the Civil War, a man who was
riding thru the farming districts of the Middle West
stopped by the wayside to talk with a farmer. Sev-
eral men were working in the field and the traveler
was interested to learn that most of them had been
soldiers in the war and that among them were a num-
ber who had been officers.

"That man over there," said the farmer, "happens
to have been a private, but the man next to him was
a corporal; that chap over there was a major and over
in the next field is a man who was a colonel."

"Indeed," said the traveler, "what kind of work-
men are they?"

264 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

"Well," said the farmer, "the private is a first-
class man and the corporal is a pretty good worker."

"Yes," said the traveler, "how about the major?"

"He's about so-so."

"But the colonel?" persisted the traveler.

"Well," said the farmer, "I ain't a-goin' to say a
word against any man that fit in the war to save the
Union, but I notify you right here and now, I ain't
goin' to hire no brigadier generals."

We had a speech at the Bowdoin College Alumni
Association the other evening here in Lewiston by an
officer of the late war about officers and service. He
said that he never would advocate a form of compul-
sory military service that forced a boy to have his
spirit broken by a martinet. The glory of the Ameri-
can soldier was that he had his self-respect still with
him, not broken to the Kaiser's goose-step and not
broken on the wheel of military discipline that intended
to reduce all men to a dead level of blind and unrea-
soning automata. He said that there were two kinds of
officers — we had them both. One would call his men
before him and say: "I am your superior officer be-
cause I happen to be such. I claim no superiority as
a man or a citizen. I recognize you as fellow-Ameri-
cans entitled to my best consideration and care. I
am, however, your commanding officer, and as such,
no matter how it has come about, I am entitled to
your obedience. The discipline of the service demands
it; your country is entitled to it and I shall see that
the service gets it. We are working together for
the same end."

There was another kind of officer who said nothing
of the kind and showed that he believed that the
men were beneath the consideration of his mightiness.
He treated men as slaves and with the fixed determi-
nation to exact the last measure of humility from them.
It was his pleasure to break their wills ; drive them

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 265

to tasks beyond their strength ; mete out punishments
for the sake of showing his power and exact the full
measure of etiquette toward his almightiness. Men
so subjected often come out of the army damaged in
Americanism — ^which is soul and body of life.

The army does not differ much, after all, from
business. The martinet in the office is responsible for
most of the un-Americanism in the shop. And it is
odd that most of these men have sprung themselves
from the shop. Given authority and forging ahead
they have fought their way to the top literally over
the bodies of others, and established there, have for-
gotten that they once were shopmen. They walk the
quarterdeck of the business craft much as the old-
fashioned "bucko" mates and captains of the old
clipper ships that once went wind- jamming around the
Horn, ruling with a curse and a blow as prelude to
the command.

But — the day is past, long past, we hope. It can't
be done any more. Some must always lead; do
the thinking; stand at the wheel and steer; navi-
gate the ship; fight the corps; but he need
not be drunk with his power. Nor need the
soldier or the workman emulate the tyrant. The
mutineer and the slacker is as bad as the bad-boss.
Cheerful commands, cheerful compliance, comradeship,
mutual responsibility, mutual advance — these are the
solvents of all future questions. You may think that
this is preaching. If you do, ask someone who has
been in the service and who has done his own think-
ing. We need good officers, good heads of business,
bigger ideals, better faith both ways and all around.

ON "WHEN I AM TIRED"

RE we ever really tired, except it be both of
the body and the mind. Tired souls are not
those who have merely toiled ; for the muscles
soon relax, the functions restore themselves
and again the body finds itself like the Ford
car, ready for another cranking with a full
tank of gasoline and the road stretching before it full
of wonders and with strange adventure awaiting it.
No — ^we are not "tired out" except it begin with the
mind and the nerve-force. We may sit a brief hour
before the fire and watch it leaping up its ladder to the
open sky and be refreshed, but if the mind be disturbed
and the soul sick, then all of the fire and all of the arm-
chair will avail but little. "I am weary of my life
because of the daughters of Heth," said Rebekah to
Isaac. The mother was the first in history to proclaim
the state of her mind — tired out with worry and
watching lest her son Jacob take a wife out of the
daughters of Canaan.

I am impressed with the error of them that work
with the hands and the bodies alone. How little they
know of the utter weariness of the other half of the
world — the desk-ridden toiler who sits hour by hour
over the problem of the day. How little they appre-
ciate how willingly he would exchange the ceaseless
round of figures and papers, the struggling with prob-
lems of research and accomplishment, the demands of
the cashier's office and the bank, for the strenuous toil
over the machine, the "going over the top" against
obstacles in the material world, the building of things
in the open, the war against earth, water, tides of the
sea, the forests and all things primeval. That flayed-
out feeling of brain-fag! That never-ending gnawing
at the heart-strings, that sense of futility as one

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 267

searches his soul and his mind for inspiration to the
betterment of mankind, the drain on the preacher, the
teacher, the writer, the manager of a business. It is
all folly ! This idea of labor. As I have said a dozen
times, labor is not "work;" labor is rough-going in
work. The ship labors in the sea ; the engine labors at
its task ; but when silently moving on, it "works" well.
We are born in "labor." God, alone, works.

Let it be said, therefore, that never can there be any
reorganization of toilers, that does not include the
brain-workers and give them a share in the production
of the world. No Soviet rule (surely coming in no dis-
tant day, I make this a prophecy, tho not by revolution
but in simplified and useful form of liberalism) can be
effective that rules out the worker in the office, at the
typewriter, over the inventor's or the editor's desk.
These know quite well what it means to be tired — tired
of the weariness that bids sleep fly away ; that rumples
the pillow; that makes the feet feel like lead and the
head too tired to lift. No rest assuages the weariness
and no balm but out-of-doors and change can bring
relief. These men cannot be counted out of the class
of "laborers." "Much study is a weariness to the flesh,"
saith the preacher.

We also have what we call a "good tired." We
have it when we come back from fishing a long, happy
day on a Maine lake, with the blue above, the fish
striking with hunger, the wind sweet on our faces, the
mountains clear in the distance. We have it after we
have worked happily with the body all day long and
accomplished things. We have it when we have come
back from a long tramp in the autumn woods and see
the lights of the camp welcoming our tired feet to a
sweet rest by the camp-fire. But we do not have it,
save the mind has been employed in happy things. We
do not have it when the body rises again and again to

268 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

toil with no enjoyment. We do not want these tired
folk. We do not want the world run, so that men and
women shall be tired and unhappy. The best work is
from the man who sings at the machine or smilingly
takes up his morning duty at his desk. Life is never
going to get ahead making other people unhappy. We
shall go mad, unless we have relief for the mind from
fear of want and from the drive of life urging us on to
the grave. These are the things in which tolerance of
the workers must come to the rescue of the situation.
We must have the mind cared for, first ; the drag upon
the nerve-force stopped; the never-ending draft upon
resources ended, so far as is possible.

The old-fashioned father used to regulate the boy's
work. If the lad said "Father, the fish are biting well
today," the father said, "You keep right on working,
sonny, and they won't bite you." Time may be when
a paternal government will see to it that everyone
produces something — ^no idlers, no drones and no over-
worked. Then "labor" will not quit whenever it gets
ten dollars a;head and go on a pleasure trip, but all alike
be busy and happy. I wonder !

ON "SEARCHING YOUR NEIGHBOR'S PAST"

F YOU have known men at all you have known
the man who is good because he was born
that way and the man who is good because
he has fought it out and decided that it is
better, that way.

How likely we are to search the past of
people to find out if they have ever been bad. How
prone are we to say that such and such a good man
has not so much to the credit as has his neighbor who
never has fallen because he never was tempted. We

JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES 269

run over the records of men's lives with a searching
finger and stop at all the black spots; as tho all the
white pages and all the tender deeds and all the char-
ities they have done afterwards, had no power to
blot a line.

And yet — in Grod's word, we find that this is not
the right way. And in all philosophy and in all fair-
play and in all practical common-sense we know that
it is not the right way. How can it be right? Here
are two men — Ox.a born under every adverse influence,
without parentage that could foster his better nature ;
cast out on the world when it was a battle to live;
made to fight and conscious that it was his wits
against the world, or starvation was the alternative.
And here is the other, gently reared, no need to worry
for money or friends. And if both are equally honest ;
equally fair; equally kind to his neighbors; equally
respectable and decent at the age of maturity, which
of the two deserves the greater praise? It is a shame
— the way the world refuses to forget the evil that
men have done while yet they live and are repentant.
It is a shame that the Past rises to confront so many
mpn and women who have sinned and repented and
reformed and found the better way. Instead of being
reviled, they should be given medals of honor, the
cross of victors, the assurance that the world gives
to them that fight good fights, and win.

And it is true in ail philosophy and in all times.
I turn to the thumb-worn pages of my Montaigne who
says, "I fancy virtue to be something else than the
mere propensity to goodness; something more noble
than good-nature, that we are born into the world
withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pur-
sue, indeed, the same methods and represent the same
face that virtue itself does, but the word virtue im-
ports, I know not what more great and active than
merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy dispo-

270 JUST TALKS ON COMMON THEMES

sition to be gently and happily drawn to the rule of
reason. He who by a natural sweetness and facility
should despise injuries received, would doubtless do a
very laudable thing ; but he who, provoked and nettled
to the quick by an offense, should fortify himself with
the arms of reason and after a great conflict master
his passion, would doubtless do a great deal more. The
first would do well ; the latter virtuously."

Thus, be it my message, today, to say what every-
one knows and so few remember — that no man who
has never been tempted knows how strong he really
is; and no man who has been tempted and fallen is
beyond temptation; and the man who is redeemed
beyond danger but is stronger for the experience,
is the nearer to being master of his soul. And this is
no plea for yielding to temptation, but a warning to
them who will make no excuses for the falling. It is
far better to conquer in the first place; but it is better
to conquer in the second or third place than not at all,
and victory makes us stronger, by the sense of power
in itself.

There is no meaner soul than the untried, scorning
the unredeemed. I should be afraid of myself, had I
no charity. I should be afraid of my neighbors, had
they no pity. For virtue is an active, not a passive
attribute. It grows not by lying dormant but by exer-
cise. It becomes strong in temptation and weak in
the cloister. Beware, therefore, how you search the
past of men and women. Rather consider them as
they are, for goodness and virtue are constant working
forces to be prized for what they may do — not for
what they have done.

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